Road Trip Stops (between Las Vegas & Dallas)

After a couple of nights in Las Vegas, we got back in the car and started driving toward Texas. It was a lot of driving but we found a couple of places to stop along the way!

Our first stop along the way was the Hoover Dam.

Baby Mollie Rose (Newborn Photography)

If you go way back to the earliest posts of this blog, you'll see that it started as a photography blog- even before I had the idea to create "Raising Memories". I don't regularly work as a photographer now, but every now & then something special happens in my family and I get the chance to practice photography again by doing a little session. That opportunity came up when sweet little Mollie Rose was born and I was happy to be able to take some photos of her, when she was just 17 days day old.

We weren't able to get together any sooner than that because her mom & dad live several hours' drive from where we live now, but when we had the opportunity to meet in the middle, at Ken's parents' house, we jumped on it!

Las Vegas, Nevada (Moving Road Trip)

Back in Utah when we booked our hotel for two nights in Las Vegas, we chose Circus Circus because we found a great deal and because it included a water park! We didn't tell the girls where we were staying for this stop because we wanted to surprise them. Although we stayed in an older room that didn't have anything special about it, we were positioned just across the street from the waterpark which served our purposes just fine!

Here are a few of our must-see stops in Vegas when you're traveling with kids...

8 Ideas for Summer Fun At Home With Kids

It's summer, school's out and suddenly all of your kids are home way more than usual and you find yourself looking for ways to keep them happy without setting them in front of a screen!

Today I'm sharing 8 fun activities you can do with your kids. Some of these are my own, and some are links that have been shared in my link party that I would love to try with my kids! I hope they give you some inspiration or items to add to your family's summer activity bucket list!

St. George, Utah (Moving Road Trip)

Halfway through March, with snow in the mountains and cold in the air, we said one last goodbye to my sister and her kids, we walked out of their house, got into our car and started driving away from our home in Herriman, Utah.

I was relieved because we were finally finished packing and emptying our townhouse. I was excited for our road trip and the adventures ahead of us.

Those feelings of anticipation were mixed up with the sudden pushing through of the feelings of sadness, loss, and uncertainty that came with leaving our new home in Utah that I was finally beginning to feel settled in. I had struggled to plant roots in this new place and it seemed that just as they were beginning to take hold, I found myself pulling them up without a clear vision of where I would soon be attempting to plant them once again.

Bed-in-a-Box Comparison (Endy vs. Douglas vs. Logan & Cove)

With several unpredictable events in our life over the last couple years, we've ended up with a total of 4 different mattresses in 2 years! We recently started sleeping on the Endy mattress and this seemed like a good opportunity to share some of our mattress-in-a-box experience. In this post I'll share our observations about a few different mattresses we've tried, to help you if you're shopping for a mattress-in-a-box and would like some real life comparisons to refer to as you do some research!

Endy vs. Douglas vs. Logan & Cove 

We started out with a traditional springs & foam mattress that we tried out in a store before purchasing and slept on that for quite a few years, until it was time to replace it. At that time we decided to try the Douglas bed-in-a-box which we enjoyed for just over a year- until our house filled with smoke and consequently, we had to dispose of our damaged mattress. We replaced that mattress with a different style of bed-in-a-box that included foam and springs (this was the first I had heard of a bed-in-a-box with springs!) called the Logan & Cove. We brought that mattress with us when we moved to Utah and slept on it for a year before moving back to Ontario recently.