Winging it!

June 30, 2016 Why I vacation I grew up in two families. My Mom, step-Dad and sisters & my Dad, step-Mom and brothers. Because of this I grew up going on many vacations. With my Mom, I went to Ocean City Maryland every summer for a week. On top of that we did many trips to visit family, and also, trips to Kings Dominion and other amusement parks. With my Dad, we did a 2-3 week vacation every summer driving to different destinations, stopping at various places over night along the way and then a week at the planned destination - such as Florida or Tennessee and ultimately on our way home, a week at White Lake, NC.  Add to that, the fact that going to my Dad's for the summer felt like a vacation because he had a pool in the backyard.  Fast forward to me being an adult. Vacations to me are just a normal part of life. I had my first son when I was 18, my 4th child when I was 26. My kids have also grown up going on vacations. They have gone to White Lake for a week every s

Thursday, June 23rd, 2016 The weather in Paris. I have to admit, we were bummed initially because the weather forecast was showing rain our entire stay. However, it turned out to be a blessing. The weather was perfect. We were only rained on once while we were out, at the end of one of our days, we were on the way to the metro, and we had umbrellas. The other times it rained, we were either sleeping or inside of a museum. However, because of the rain and clouds, the days were cool in the mid-sixties and absolutely perfect for sight-seeing. We didn't have to worry sweating, getting sunburned or that gross feeling of being just being too hot. There wasn't one aspect of our trip that God wasn't smiling down on us. Here are some pictures that show the sky in the background  - it sure looks ominous. However, you can see from the ground being dry - it wasn't raining. Looking over the Seine River [; Place De La Concorde  Looking out over Paris from Sacre Cou

Wednesday, June 22, 2016 Hello all. I'm back from Paris and we had a wonderful and safe journey! My daughter, me, and my son at Sacre Coeur Because my daughter is so fascinated with history, we had pre-planned and read tons of information on the history of each site we were planning to visit. It was a truly educational experience as each place that we went, we knew beforehand so much of the history and background. It was more awing somehow to really look at a monument or even just a spot in a park and know what had transpired there, right at that very place you were standing. Concorde, trying to decide where the guillotine was based on drawings. If you haven't been to Paris, it is a must see place. So beautiful that you can't even begin to get the full grasp of it's beauty through pictures. Because of it's beautiful architecture even the apartment buildings look as if they're a work of art. If you don't have a fear of heights, Paris i

Thursday, June 9th, 2016 I survived the final week of work prior to vacation. I tried to follow my survival guide the best that I could. I even went to bed last night at 8 pm, so that I could be at my office at 6 am and have a good nights sleep beforehand. It worked! I was able to get everything tied up, put away, or handed off for someone to handle while I'm away - because this vacation will be strictly vacation - no work! So this post is sporadic thoughts I wanted to mention, forgive me if it doesn't flow. My daughter, son & I are flying to Paris tomorrow. My son is actually going for work, but will be spending a little time with us before he heads to his work apartment. He's also staying in Europe for another month after we leave, to do some traveling. I won't be around to post anything for the next 12 days, but I will do my best to post the week after we get back. If you're interested in seeing posts about my trip, you can follow me on; Twitter at

Friday, June 3rd, 2016 Well, for the first time this year, I've gone more than a week without a blog post. May was unexpectedly a crazy month for me. Business is great and keeping me busy. My unexpected trip to Oklahoma and our planned long weekend visiting family in West Virginia for Memorial weekend added to the hectic days. June came in with a bang - beginning on a short week. Yesterday was my final Leadership Prince William class and our graduation. That means that I had two full days of not working this week between the holiday and LPW. I also have had networking meetings to attend on two of the days I did work. So you can see how this has led to me not having time to write in my blog. And then there are our travel plans... We've still been working on those, however at the moment we're watching Paris closely as they're having a lot of rain and flooding at the moment. It's hard to gauge how the weather will be in 10-20 days. Our friends in Paris are telling