Family Adventures + Travel

A Birthday Weekend in Montreal

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Back in October, we headed the quick 3 hours north to Montreal to celebrate Kev’s birthday. This was our 3rd time visiting and every time, we fall in love a little bit more. What a crazy cool and beautiful city. There is soooo much to see and do! We never get to do it all, but it always makes us excited to come back the next time. Whenever we travel with the kids, we pack the stroller and just walk around as much as we can. The kids are pretty used to it by now, and have become quite the little explorers as well. We do cycle through the stroller quite a bit. Each one getting a little rest while the other one walks or gets held. It’s a big team effort!! The bummer was that it was pouring rain one of the days we were there. We made the most of it though and checked out the Biodome (is anyone thinking of Pauly Shore now?). It was such a cool place! The kids had a great time! You get to walk through all these different ecosystems and see animals and really great exhibits about each one. Totally worth a trip if you are visiting!

The fall colors were really putting on a show for us that weekend. It was gorgeous! I could wander around all day there. Every turn is another charming little street to walk down. Have you ever been? What are you favorite places to go, see, eat?? Always looking for recommendations for the next time!

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The Hyde | Glen Falls, NY

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Late in the summer, the kids and I headed up to Glens Falls one day to check out The Hyde. It’s this super cute art museum in a beautiful historic house. I had never been there before but was excited to explore around. It was a beautifully warm August day and we made the most of it. We visited the museum, stopped at a coffee shop and got drinks and snacks and enjoyed downtown a little bit.

The current exhibit was woodcuts and engravings by Albrecht Dürer and etchings by Rembrandt. It was awesome! If you didn’t know, I am slightly obsessed with all things printmaking. I took every class I could in college. The Hyde had wonderful worksheets for the kids to work on based on the art they were seeing. They learned all about etchings, lines, crosshatching and monograms. Rowan and Finley had a blast working on them and especially trying to find all the Dürer monograms with the magnifying glasses. I will say, I did feel overly watched (which I get, but…) by security but everyone was nice enough about bringing 3 small children to the museum. It’s a good lesson for them though! I like bringing the kids to museums not only to introduce them to beautiful works of art, but because they have to learn self control as well. They can’t run, yell or climb. They have to be respectful and understand there is a time and place to get crazy. It’s good for them, even if we always do get into trouble a little bit. Hahhaha! Always. We always get in trouble at least once.

Do you like brining your kids to museums? We’ve been going a lot lately. I feel like I have 2 more museum posts waiting to be posted… MassMoCA and Storm King coming up!

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Visiting Vancouver

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Wow! I just came on to post some pictures and realized, whoops! it’s been a whole month since i’ve been on here. How does that happen. I know we’re all like “time goes by so fast” but man! time goes by so fast. Hahahaha doh!

Anyway, the last week of August Orion and I hopped a plane and headed out to Vancouver to visit my sister. She’s lived out there for awhile now, but I’ve never had the chance to visit. What a beautiful place! Like, it blew me away!! My sister lives about an hour north of the city, surrounded by beautiful mountains. It’s not called Sea to Sky Country for nothing. I was there a week but I know I only barely scratched the surface of the area. We drove up to Joffre Lakes Provincial park one day to hike, spent time in Vancouver and Whistler, hiked around Garibaldi Provincial Park, enjoyed an evening at the top of the Sea to Sky Gondola and just spent time catching up. Miss being near to my sister!

It was such a fun trip. I wish everyone was there with me to experience it. I know Kev and the kids would have loved it. I sure could have used the help carrying the babe up all the those mountains. Ha!

Thanks for being such a good host and tour guide Carrie. Love ya!

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Untitled^^best little welcome home committee I ever did see!

Birth Order, New Shoes and An End of Summer Track Meet.

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This post is sponsored by our friends at Zappos. 

Have you guys ever read books about birth order? It’s something that totally fascinates me. I believe there is real truth there. I am the first born in my family and obviously so is Rowan. I can tell already with her that she is sooooooooooo a first born. Rowan looooves to follow rules, is super bright, hardworking, and very motherly to her siblings. It’s fun to read about each child and what characteristics they might have based on the order they were born. One thing I’ve paid close attention to is what they say about middle children. Dear, sweet, sensitive Finley. I really try hard to not, what we like to call “middle child” her. We try to give her as much individual time and attention as we can and make sure she always gets her very own special things. I try to keep the hand-me-downs to a minimum. That’s why I was so excited to team up with Zappos and let her pick out these new Leepz sneakers by Stride Rite. I knew she would feel so special since these were our very first venture into light up shoes in our family. She has been walking, jumping and skipping around the house making them light up. It’s been so, so cute. I think (I mean I know) a part of her really likes hearing Rowan say she wishes she had a pair as well. I love being able to give her special moments that are all her own. Finley is also super excited because, as the middle child she’s so in looooooove with her older sister, and she can’t wait to take her new shoes to the track and be like Rowan. She told me she thinks she will be able to run just as fast as Rowan does. We found a high school in the area that has weekly family track meets. Everyone is invited to come race, no matter what age you are. Finley races, Rowan races, Kev races, it’s awesome!! The kids have been having such a great time going every week and with Finley’s new shoes you can bet she is going to run like the wind.

These are the perfect shoes to take her from the end of summer and keep her running straight into the back to school season. We don’t need tons of back to school gear this year because we are homeschooling the kids (I can imagine there will be lots of pajama days) but new shoes were definitely on the list. I am glad that we could easily (Zappos makes everything easy!) check that off the list. Whooohooo!

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A few from the past track meet…
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P7269898^^go FinFin go!!

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24 Hours in Philadelphia

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My Shirt | Jeans | Bandana | Sandals | Finley’s Sandals | Finley’s crop top | Rowan’s Sandals | Rowan’s camera | Orion’s romper (on sale).

Tuesday we headed down to Philly for a quick overnight trip with some friends. Kev is in love with all things hip hop and was super pumped to go see Propaganda finally. We meet our friends down there and all rented an airbnb for the night. It worked out so great, especially with all the kids! A small shared apartment with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen and a nice living room was perfect for 5 kids and 4 adults. When traveling, airbnb is such an awesome option! We didn’t have tons of time in Philly (such a bummer!). We got there around 5pm on Tuesday night and left the next day around 10pm. On Tuesday night we got to meet up with Julie and Chris (yay!!!) for dinner. Love getting to catch up with my dear friend. Still so thankful that blogging brought us together so many years ago. The guys headed out from dinner to the show and we finished the night with ice cream and just hanging out at the apartment.

Untitled^^are we officially coffee drinkers? eeeeek!

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The next day we tried to pack as much as we could into one day. Whenever we travel to a new city, we love just walking all around and taking everything in. We started the day with breakfast at the Hungry Pigeon (thanks for the recommendation Julie). We headed over to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell after that. I love how old the city feels- it’s so cool to think of who else was once walking those streets. I love history! From there we walked over to Franklin Square and let the kids play on the playground and ride the carousel. Feeling hungry, we walked over to Reading Terminal for lunch and to stroll up and down all the aisles looking at all the food. Rowan thought it was pretty neat in there. Next up was city hall, the fountains at Dilworth Park and then we headed to the Magic Gardens. That was top on my list of what I wanted to check out while we were there. I love all the mosaics you come across as you walk around the city. So beautiful! The Magic Gardens were so cool!! We had so much fun exploring and playing a great scavenger hunt game. Totally recommend it. Right across the street is a playground called Seger Park. We let the kids play there a little while before we took the walk back to where the car was. We ended up just walking a big ol’ circle around the city. We stopped at a Whole Foods on the way and grabbed some dinner because it was really the easiest option at that point with the kids. They love eating at Whole Foods and were starting to get pretty tired and whiney. We were trying to just push through and get to the car. They were overall good sports but of course a full day of walking around the city is a lot of little ones.

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Once we got back to the car, there was no way that we could leave without heading over to the Art museum and reenacting Rocky. Rocky is top on Kev’s list of favorite movies. He actually just watched all of them again when Orion was born. He would take the end of the evening shift with him when he was just born and give me some time to take a shower or whatnot. The girls were totally in to running up the stairs and jumping up and down. Hahah so funny.

Thanks Philly for being so fun! We loved ya! Can’t wait to come back.

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4th of July | Lake Placid

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We packed up the car on Saturday and headed 2 hours north to Lake Placid for the holiday weekend. We love Lake Placid and were all totally stoked to be up there camping for 3 days. It was Orion’s first camping experience and overall he did pretty good. One of my favorite things to do in Lake Placid is head up to the summit of Whiteface Mtn. It’s one of my most favorite spots. The view is just beautiful (like stunning!) and it’s easy enough to get up there with the kids. There’s a short hike once the road ends but totally doable (although a tiny bit nerve racking) with little ones. Finley loved climbing all the rocks to the top. They’re becoming such great hikers, I love it! We spent the morning hanging out on top of the mountain and then headed into town to watch the parade and fireworks. We feel so very lucky to live so close to the Adirondacks. I highly recommend everyone coming and checking out the area at least once in there lifetime. There is just so much to see and explore. New York is really a cool state. It took sometime to win me over when we first moved here but I have to say I am a total convert. New York you have my heart.

Untitled^^Daddy & Daughter cliff jumping

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and our little parade goers…
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The Playoffs and a Marathon

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The past 2 weekends have been sort of a whirlwind (in the best possible way of course)! Last minute I decided to head up to Toronto with a friend to watch her husband (who plays for the Albany Devils) in the playoffs. They were playing the Toronto Marlies. Oh man was it fun! and stressful! but awesome!. They ended up losing in game 7 which was such a bummer, but I was so glad we got to be there to watch the final 2 games. It also meant we got to pop in and see family while we were up there for the weekend. I love when the kids get to see my Grandparents!! We also went to the yummiest little place with my cousins called The Cold Pressery where I had a delicious acai bowl and killer iced matcha latte. I/m pretty sure I also ate my weight in Canadian candies that I can’t seem to find in the states very often. The 7 hour trip always takes waaaaaay longer with kids in the car but we muscled through and all in all everyone did pretty well. Well except for the lady at the toll booth who was NOT impressed that we were paying a $12 toll with quarters. It provided Courtney and I some good amount of laughs after so totally worth it.

Last weekend we headed down to Brooklyn for the Airbnb Brooklyn Half Marathon. A friend (same friend as above- we love you Courtney!) have been training for this half for a few months now. We’ve been running 2-3 times a week together. During the week we run in the morning while Rowan is at school. Courtney pushes her son in her Bob and I push Finley and Orion in our double BOB. Goodness I love that stroller! And then the husbands watch the kids on the weekend for us to do the long run. Anyway, race day was Saturday morning. I guess this is the largest half in the whole country, there were over 27,000 people running! Which was cool and not cool all at the same time. Once the race stared, we didn’t cross the start line for 35 mins??!?!?!?! Crazy! There was a whole lot of weaving in and out of people which got kind of tiring after a few miles. It was a nice race though- through Prospect Park and down to Coney Island. We stayed over an extra night so I could go to the ErgoBaby event the next day. It was in the most beautiful location in Brooklyn! And I got to see Dani! Love that girl. The rest of the day we wandered (kids scooted) all around Brooklyn. We left convinced we should rent/sublet a place for an extended amount of time sometime soon. Brooklyn we love you!

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Hi, I'm Jen!

Welcome to my personal lifestyle blog. It features topics such as motherhood, family life, fashion, cooking, and all sorts of adventures. I hope you enjoy what you find!

Jen Loves Kev
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