Worldschooling Begins! First- Mama & Boys go to Utah (Zion and Vegas- Road trip)

The day after 4th of July, Daddy Brad drove the boys and I to Buffalo Airport for our flight to Salt Lake City, Utah.  This was the beginning of our summer world schooling adventures, and first Mom-Sons Westward road trip.  We were embarking on a journey that would first take us to Salt Lake City, UT to visit friends, then a weekend in Zion National Park, an over-nighter in Las Vegas, and on to Southern CA where we planned to spend the entire month of July (and 1st week of August) for some summer Cali time with family and friends.  Brad stayed behind in WNY to finish some house projects, enjoy golfing and boating while we were visiting family.  It occurred to me that we have spent the last SIX summers in Western New York, and I really wanted the boys to experience the SoCal beach summer I grew up with.  The bonus was that Chloe was off of school for the summer, and many of our friends would be available to hang out and make memories with.  Its been so difficult to squeeze in West Coast time each year, so beginning our year of travel and adventures on the West visiting family and friends was a nice way to kick off our adventurous year!

The West Coast road trip began in Salt Lake City, Utah where we drove with Emily to Zion and spent a couple days there, then she took us to pick up rental car where we then continued West, ended up Southern CA middle of the next week.  We drove through 4 states (Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and CA) within a 24 hour time period (stopping off in Vegas) and then dropping off our rental car in Irvine (that cost around $100/day bc drop-off was in a different state).  Phew! This was seriously a much easier road trip and drive compared to the 6 hour drive to NYC from Bemus. 

 

At Atlanta Airport PF Chang dinner- sending daddy photos before 

we boarded our plane to Salt Lake City 

Our West Coast Road Trip:
EXPERIENCE: Ninja warrior course at Snowbird, UT- Zion National Park river hiking at the Narrows, Las Vegas sights and lights, roadtrippin' in the car
LEARN: Dinosaur Discovery center in Utah, facts/ info on gems, rocks. and minerals, history of red rock and Zion, Magic store in Vegas, learning about climate, weather, various geographical features (mountains and desert)
BOND: Reconnecting with old friends in Utah, Vegas, mom-sons bonding, brother bonding

The many goofy airplane selfies I find on my phone!  This was when we were redirected to fly to Atlanta due to severe thunderstorms, making it to Salt Lake City 2 hours later and relieved we didn't have to spend the night at an airport.

Snowbird Mountain, Utah

Ninja course.  Jax is quite the warrior!  He may be scrawny but he's strong, fast, and fierce!

Hiking and gondola ride with our friend Mr. Chris, who graciously took the day off of work and took us around this beautiful mountain ski resort just up the hill from their house.  We met our friends Chris and Emily when they were living in Bemus, and about 2 years ago they moved to Salt Lake City, Utah and are loving the nature and vibe of the city.  We were so happy to visit them!  (Brad visited in the Winter earlier this year, and had the pleasure of snowboarding these mountains with Chris and other buddies.)

We found bits of snow, in the middle of summer!!

The ride down the chair lift was thrilling!  It was like being in the Austrian Alps again.  The beauty! Poor Mr. Chris was nervous of heights and wasn't that fond of Jax yelling out "Snap!" every time we passed a chair lift tower!

Sushi time!!!  My boys and I LOVE sushi, especially with fun friends and at fun sushi restaurants.

After a full day exploring the beautiful mountains of SLC, Emily, the boys and I drive about 4 hours south to Zion National Park.  We stayed at Sand Hollow Condo Resort for 2 nights and had such a nice time taking in all the wonderful red rock nature.  It was breathtaking!  The boys couldn't believe how red and picturesque the mountains looked and they were enamored with their first desert landscape.

River hiking the famous Narrows!  This was not planned but boys were excited to keep hiking especially in the water because it was so hot.  The weather was over 100 degrees so walking/ swimming in the river cooled us down.  What a wet n' wild experience!

Lots of incredible gems for the boys to explore and marvel at! Zion was truly a magical place for these gem and mineral loving Science boys!

A well-deserved delicious Mexican dinner and margaritas after a whole day of hiking!

St. George Dinosaur Discovery Center, where real dinosaur tracks were discovered what once used to be a prehistoric lake but has since dried up.  We watched real paleontologists at work in their lab dusting off fossils.

Viva Las Vegas!!! We arrived and went straight to the sign!  Believe it or not, this was my first time seeing the famous Vegas sign.... and I didn't even jump into the picture!  Next time for sure, when Daddy Brad is with us!

We check in at the LINQ hotel and casino, and got ready to drive up to our friend Justin and Sabina's house for dinner.  These were our friends that also lived in CDM, CA with us and after their destination Mexico wedding (that we attended with the boys in 2014) they moved to Las Vegas for work opportunity, cheaper housing, and to be closer to Sabina's brother.  They have one daughter - Minka, and another girl on the way!  We met Minka for the first time and boys gifted her this hot pink plush dino they picked out at the Dinosaur Discovery Center.  We enjoyed catching up, seeing their amazingly designed house (she's a designer), the boys took a dip in their pool, and we feasted on great Mediterranean food. 

We got back to the Vegas Strip by 9pm and ventured out to explore some more Vegas glitz and sparkle, it is a city that never sleeps so we made a plan to see the Mirage volcano erupt, the pirate ships of Treasure Island, and ducked into the Venetian Hotel canals just in time as a massive desert thunderstorm rolled through the city.  Taj couldn't believe how many people he saw smoking and this bothered him. Both boys were fascinated about Vegas not having any clocks- a fact we learned from Mr. Chris and sure thing he was right! Vegas with kids is an entirely different animal and experience than before kids (or my crazy college party days).  Not to say it isn't fun, bu its a different kind of fun, because Vegas has a ton of action and entertainment even for families.  The boys would definitely be up for visiting again and seeing a cool show (like a Cirque Solei) and I wouldn't mind staying at our favorite Mandalay Bay Resort where we can enjoy the pools and the aquarium.

We checked out a magic store at the Venetian, where Zoltar (the mechanical fortune teller) gave us a very accurate fortune! We ate gelato at the canal shoppes, and then braved the flooded rainy streets of Vegas as we made our way back to our hotel.  I told the boys they experienced their first Vegas shower! LOL

The next morning we feasted at a highly reviewed breakfast restaurant, that was featured on a food network.  We filled up our bellies, packed up, and hit the road.  SoCal or BUST!

Announcement: We are WORLD-SCHOOLING!

We would like to officially share our exciting plans for this next 2018-2019 school year! Starting July we will embark on a travel family gap year and "world-schooling" adventures. I'm putting my career on hold (again!) and pulling the boys out of school just for one year, to travel and teach outside of the box. 💡 Some of the most amazing and inspiring learning happens outside of the classroom, and even at their young age, I want our boys to experience and develop a completely different perspective on life, that they hopefully apply to the rest of their schooling years and life-long goals. Before the commitments and crazy endless schedules of school, sports, activities, and jobs ground us and consume us, we are leaping at an opportunity to experience something completely different! Every month we will go on a new adventure, alternating road trips and international destinations, always with a 2-week Bemus home break & reboot in between. We look forward to reconnecting with friends/ family around the globe. World, brace yourself! 

"Two of the greatest gifts we can give our children are roots and wings." -- Hodding Carter

This idea first originated around January 2018 when the Winter Blues were hitting (me), and we were at a place where our mundane repetitive life began to drain us.   I began questioning whether we were on the right path with the boys' education, school experience, my career, my work environment, and our precious family time began to get stretched thin.  Put it simply, we were on a hamster wheel with work, school, after school activities,  then repeat.  It was speeding up and out of control.  We were already getting burnt out... same old same old.  We needed a change, we needed something to happen to pull us out of a rut. The idea came to me from my spirit guides (sounds mysterious doesn't it).  After my friend did an energy reiki, each morning I received answers, solutions, and ideas.  "World schooling" was the perfect concoction for allowing the boys the time and pace to learn and for them to enjoy learning again.  Public school in Bemus was taking all the fun out of it. Both boys were academically advance for their grade levels and the school wasn't quite meeting their potential.  My school psych background and testing allowed me to verify all of this, and come up with a better educational plan for them.  I was missing my time with my boys and yearning for the Stay-At-Home-Mom days of no schedules... I discovered I was not quite ready to cut the cord and fly into a full fledge career- which was pretty toxic and negative at Pine Valley.  Our world-schooling family travel year was going to be everything but conventional. Brad thought I was joking at first, but then when he realized its perfectly legal and possible to pull your kids out of public school, he hopped on the band wagon and saw the benefits.   We felt we were the lucky few to be able to budget and afford a year of adventures, while respectfully balancing it with Brad's ability to run and operate his company.  Instead of taking off for the whole year, we would go on numerous adventures and international trips throughout the year.  Our curriculum would revolve around the place we would travel to and allow for lots of creative, active, and adventurous learning that public school could never offer.  The home breaks in between our trips would give us down-time to process our previous trips and prepare and study material for the next.  Most importantly, we knew the boys would need a balance of home comforts, Gravity kitty cuddles, and to be able to see and reconnect with their buddies.

I call this next year the EXPERIENCE, LEARN, and BOND family world-schooling year- the ELB!  Our own version of the inspiring Eat, Pray, Love book/movie.  Its going to be about experiencing new places, cultures, museums, trying new things together and individually, and developing new hobbies.  Learning hands-on and out of the box, active learning on the go, independently, and through different "classrooms". Learning about ourselves and who we are. Bonding with family during our travel, trusting one another, depending on each other, and strengthening the brother-brother relationship, mom-sons relationship, dad-sons relationship, and lots of uninterrupted family togetherness.  You see, with the boys being 8 and 6 years old, we have this this teeny window of time where we still have them to ourselves.  Sooner or later, the boys will be obsessed with their friends, and wanting to spend every moment with them.  They will be involved in after school activities, sports, and other commitments that will deplete our precious family time.  To be able to take a year all to ourselves, without schedules, commitments, school calendars, and that constant ticking clock, is well, every parent's dream come true! We couldn't have asked for better timing with the boys' ages and grade levels.  Their academics and curriculum all manageable, and this would actually allow me to work 1:1 with each of them to figure out their learning styles, give them strategies, and we can work at their pace, and pursue their interests.  They need their love for learning re-instilled because their elementary school has unfortunately taken that away from them.  This is an opportunity not to be passed up, and we would never regret it.  I had my foot in the door of my school psych career and figured out exactly what/ where I wanted to pursue it.  We finally down-sized and sold the cottage, Ellicottville ski property, the Range Rover, and my BMW, (2 houses and 2 cars!) and of course Brad was fortunate to have the flexibility with his work schedule and working remotely while traveling.

Everything we've done and places we've been up to now has led to this new chapter.  Traveling with the boys at a young age has made them adaptable travelers and their brains continue to absorb and retain everything they are exposed to.  No better timing to give them the world than us as teachers, hand-in-hand in this journey of self-growth, and give them experiences and knowledge that will help shape them and mold them into open-minded, driven, compassionate, and educated adults. Instead of traveling the world in one year and hopping from country to country, the plan is to "slow travel" and pick a different region (continent) to travel slowly and explore, connecting with family/ friends when we can, and finding a home base and schooling atmosphere or program where the boys can soak up the most they can and branch out socially.  Its about forming connections so its more meaningful and becomes engraved in their memory.  That's how we usually travel (we are not really vacation people as can be seen from our prior trips).  We've always been city explorers, adventure seekers, road-trippers, and always preferring authentic local experiences over engineered touristy ones.  I hope this extraordinary year will make the boys world-explorers and thinkers on a whole new level. I hope it will change us as a family, bring us even closer, and establish an amazing tight-knit foundation of love and trust, so much so that when our boys become teens they will want to continue to travel with us and pick the destinations.  These are some big goals, hopes, and ambitions, sooooo, let the adventures begin!

4th of July 2018

Another Fourth of July, another traditional annual day boating, BBQing, and watching fireworks with our good friends!  It seems to get more fun each year as the boys and their buddies can enjoy boating and tubing on such a hot and humid day.  The fireworks this year were different as the Floating Stage in Bemus is gone, thus no fireworks were scheduled.  We saw personal fireworks at a distance, but we also created our own "spark" with sparklers and poppers!