I was truly blessed growing up to be a part of a family that traveled.  Since my parents were both school teachers, we had plenty of time in the summer to pack up and hit the road!  Keep in mind, my parents were school teachers, so these were not glamourous vactations full of ski trips, water parks, restaraunts and hotels.  Our road trips consisted of tent camping (thank you K.O.A.), dinners from the cooler (a.k.a. cooler crud) and finding all the cool stops along the way that were free or cheap!  ​While our trips may have been a strain on the family budget, they were full of fun and happy memories (somehow you forget the stressful times when it is over).  My brother and I were really lucky to have gotten to see so much of the United States of America!

From Mt. Rushmore, Devil's Tower, and The Grand Canyon, to a tour up the west coast of California, Oregon, and Washington.  We visited the world's deepest hand-dug well in Greensburg, Kansas, Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, an Indian Pueblo in Taos, New Mexico, and the cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde, Colorado. 

​Every once in a while, usually in the fall, we got to go to places like Disney World and Sea World!

Of course, as a teenager these trips got a little embarrassing.  We were getting the car serviced in California on one of our trips, and I realized that my dad was wearing a tie-dyed tank top, shorts, fanny pack, and Mickey Mouse socks with sandals.  We were quite a sight!

​Y'all, this blog would be too long if I named all of the fun places my family traveled over the years!  We usually landed in Colorado for a week or so somewhere along the way to visit with my grandparents and play in the mountains we all still love so much!

Being able to travel and see so much of our beautiful country did so much to help shape who I am today.  I am a southern girl at heart, but I am sure you can tell by touring my home and reading my other posts that my style and personality has been heavily influenced by sights and experiences I was exposed to on our journeys!  What a priceless treasure, to have been able to soak up different cultures, styles, people, and landscapes.  Thanks to my adventurous parents for being willing to load us up and be away from home for weeks at a time.  Your kids are better people for it!

In honor of all of these nostalgic feelings this summer, Tara, Jorj and I thought it would be fun to spread the southern love across the whole country!  During the month of July we want to get a new Facebook "like" from at least one person in every state!  So, if you are reading this, and you don't already follow us on Facebook, head on over and like our page!  If you are a Facebook fan already, we hope you'll tag a friend from a far away place and help us reach our goal!  

​If you are heading out on a road trip of your own this summer, we hope you have safe and happy travels!  Share a picture with us along the way!
​-Roxie

I grew up in a small town. Scratch that. I grew up in a rural community outside of a small town. Next door to my grandparents’ farm and within a mile of the county line, I was the first one on the school bus every morning and the last one off every afternoon. Keep in mind, we have one elementary school, while the middle and high schools share a campus, for the entire county! ​

The following spring (2002), Chris’s family farm was featured on a Food Network show called “Food Finds.” If you’ve read my blog “Muscadines, Grandma, and a Husband,” you’ll know that his family grows muscadine grapes. Chris’s grandfather, father, and uncle were interviewed for the show, which focused on the capsules “Papa Jacob” was making from the seeds of the muscadines and the health benefits they offered. At the time, he was making them by hand in his home office. I remember watching the show in our little apartment with one of our friends from Ocilla who also lived in Atlanta. Afterward, we all just giggled and stared at each other, amazed and bewildered at what we had just seen on TV! 

The older I get, the more I grow to love Fall! Cooler mornings, turning leaves, the scent of freshly-dug peanuts have all become a few of my favorite things. I love how going back to school puts our family back in a routine after the freedom of summer. I also love celebrating the season at family reunions, fall festivals, really any holiday gathering. 

Our family truly enjoys participating in our church’s “Trick-Or-Trunk,” which is our Halloween/Fall Festival type celebration. Since our church is located way out in the country, most children in our church don't get to go trick-or-treating. (Side note: I went trick-or-treating one time when I was a kid. My mama had to call ahead to let folks know we were coming to their house so they would be prepared to pass out candy. I think we drove around for two hours, visited 4-5 houses, and received a handful of candy. I did have an awesome “Bride of Frankenstein” costume, thanks to my crafty mama!) Stories like mine are what inspired “Trick-or-Trunk.” Church members park their cars in a circle, with their trunks facing inside the circle. They open and decorate their trunks, then once it gets dark, pass out candy to the children as they walk around the circle in their cute costumes. For many of these kids, it’s the only chance they have to trick-or-treat. For many of the adults, it’s a fun time to get dressed up, escape reality, and just enjoy themselves for a little while! 

Throughout the years, our family has dressed up in various themes, usually in homemade costumes. It’s become a sort of tradition to decide what we’re going to be, then figure out how to make the costumes. Many times we’ve been superheroes and villains, but also movie characters, and this year - a family of trophies! My boys were champion tennis and soccer player trophies, while my husband and I snuck in a bit of adult humor: his plaque read “I Tried (participation award),” and mine read “World’s Okayest Runner!” We just love to have fun together!

This fall, we’ve already had two family reunions, are helping host a church youth retreat, have attended two festivals with more on the calendar, in addition to regular family and church holiday celebrations coming up. Now, you know that here in the South, we enjoy our celebrations, and the fact that they always revolve around food! And, confession time: I, like so many others, love pumpkin-flavored anything - I get positively giddy at my first pumpkin-spiced latte of the season! Since we have so many gatherings, I have a few recipes that I keep in mind to bring to the table. Harvest Cobb Salad is a great one, with sliced apples and pears, toasted pecans, dried cranberries, boiled eggs, and poppy seed dressing. Of course, green bean or hash brown casseroles are traditional, and usually enjoyed by most folks. I always like to bring something a little different, though. This year, I took a bread pudding recipe I’ve made many times and swapped a out a few ingredients to make a yummy Pumpkin Raisin-Bread Pudding! Even my boys, who don’t care much for bread pudding, loved it! It always makes me happy to make something my boys really enjoy!

Be sure to join our Recipe Club to receive a free printable recipe card with my Pumpkin Raisin-Bread Pudding recipe on it. This is a great dish to serve as dessert, but it’s also delicious for brunch!

After much research (read: way too much time spent on Pinterest), I created a system where they can pack their own lunches. I had everything all set up at the beginning of last school year, and it worked great! For a couple of weeks. Then, my car decided to wrap itself around a tree. Since I had just stocked everything, my system worked well for my husband who suddenly found himself playing the role of “Mr. Mom.” Then, suddenly, the baskets were empty. And, since my loving church family kept bringing food so my family would survive without me in the kitchen, there was no room for baskets in my over-flowing refrigerator! I couldn’t drive or work, so I didn’t have any place to be at any particular time. Because of that, packing lunches didn't stress me out like it once did, and that was one thing I could do to be helpful.

Here we are, a year later, and I’m trying to get my system back into place. Now that my older son is in middle school where there are more options, and all our schools now have free lunch (high-fives all around!), he usually eats in the cafeteria. That helps me tremendously! My younger son tends to be a little more picky. Not like he’ll only eat chicken tenders and french fries, but more like he sometimes wants all fruit in his lunchbox. He usually doesn’t care for his foods to be mixed together, although he loves nachos. And, texture plays a big part in whether or not he likes a food - french fries and oven roasted potatoes are fine, baked or mashed potatoes are not. He has eaten a whole tomato like an apple and entire containers of cherry tomatoes, loves chili and spaghetti, but doesn’t like “cooked” tomatoes. Somehow, all his food preferences make sense to me, but because the school cafeteria that has hundreds of kids to feed every day doesn’t tend to cater to what one child likes, if I don’t want him to go hungry, then we’re packing his lunch. 

So, my system is pretty simple. I fix the “entree” of his lunchbox, whether it’s leftover taco soup in a thermos, a turkey bacon ranch wrap, a chef salad, or his all-time favorite, the old standby, PB&J, with Southern Mercantile Jam (any flavor, he loves them all!). Sometimes, on super busy mornings (or when I’m moving especially slowly) he’ll just grab a nachos or pizza Lunchable. Really, I’m just trying to give him something with protein that will fill him up. He also really likes cheese (real cheese, not string cheese) and yogurt, so I encourage him to grab one of those if I think he needs a little more protein or dairy. 

Next, I have a basket of fruits and veggies from which he can pick two. I try to prepare ahead of time and have bags of cut-up celery, baby carrots, or grapes ready to go, but there are also apples and clementines..

A few years ago, my family began doing something we never thought we’d do - camping! Now, we didn’t want to invest in a camper or RV because we knew we’d feel like we had to use it for every single trip we took, and I still enjoy sleeping in a hotel room for some trips! Instead, we purchased a tent, which claims to sleep 6 people, but in reality has just enough room for the four of us. As our boys grow taller and taller, that tent gets smaller and smaller!

I love going camping in our little tent, though. Not because I’m really that "outdoorsy," although I do appreciate the natural surroundings. I love it because it’s time spent with my family with little to no distractions! When we’re at home, we don’t stop to look for fireflies or build a fire to roast marshmallows. My boys enjoy riding their bikes through the woods so much more than they do at home. Just the simple things like playing cards or eating hot dogs are so much more fun than they would be at home.

On a camping trip, we’re in close quarters with each other, which would be annoying at home. Even when we go on vacation and stay in a hotel room, we have more space. And, since we’re physically closer, I think it also brings us closer together in our relationships with each other. We go on adventures together, doing things we’ve never done and seeing things we’ve never seen before. I love knowing that we are building memories with our boys that they will have for a lifetime.

I’d like to share with you some of our favorite camping spots so far. We’d love to hear from you if you’ve had great experiences at the same locations! Since we’re really just getting started with camping, we’d also love to hear your suggestions for our next camping trip!

1. Tybee Island
http://www.riversendcampground.com

This was our first tent camping experience, and it was a great one! We went with my sister’s family, who had actually been tent camping before, which was a big help. Tybee’s beaches are a lot more natural and less "tourist-y" than many beaches, but we liked that. There are lots of cute little shops and our favorite seafood place, "The Crab Shack." Of course, Tybee is also just minutes away from Savannah, so there’s plenty to do!

2. Anastasia Island State Park
https://www.floridastateparks.org/park/anastasia

Anastasia Island is just across the Bridge of Lions from St. Augustine, with a more natural and less crowded beach. Of course, the trip to St. Augustine is quick, so we enjoyed touring the St. Augustine Pirate Museum, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and Castillo de San Marcos. Of course, my boys’ favorite moment was when they fired the cannons from the fort!

3. Red Top Mountain State Park
www.gastateparks.org/RedTopMountain

We loved Red Top Mountain because our tent site was right on the banks of Lake Allatoona! My boys just slipped right off the rocks and in to the cool water! We visited the Booth Western Art Museum and The Etowah Indian Mounds. Both were fun and informative field trips that even my boys could appreciate.

4. O’Leno State Park
https://www.floridastateparks.org/park/Oleno

We just visited O’Leno State Park recently, and again, my sister’s family came with us. Located in North Florida, O’Leno is apparently short for "Old Leno," which was once a bustling little town in the late 1800s, until the railroad was diverted around it. We took a short hike from the park area to see where the Santa Fe River actually disappears underground! The river continues underground for three miles before it resurfaces in River Rise Preserve State Park. This time, we didn’t plan much in the way of activities, but we did kayak down the Santa Fe River and saw several springs, including Lilly Springs, where we found "Naked Ed." Yes, he is naked, as my son discovered in attempting to be the first to arrive at the springs! He has a small dock where he sits with a wall to protect your eyes, and he is happy to talk with visitors about his life and family and how he came to be "Naked Ed." It was certainly an experience we’d never have anywhere else!

5. FDR State Park
www.gastateparks.org/FDRoosevelt

Our family has made several trips to Callaway Gardens, but hadn’t really taken notice of FDR State Park. Boy, had we been missing out! There were so many places to hike and picnic and just take in the beautiful views! Of course, we saw Callaway Gardens again and enjoyed the Butterfly Center and the Birds of Prey show, but we also visited Warm Springs to see President Roosevelt’s Little White House and learn a little more about his life. And, we drove a little farther to Pine Mountain to the Wild Animal Safari! That was one of the most interesting and fun adventures we’ve had! If you go, rent a van - I promise, it’s worth it!

One thing that has always bothered me when we camp is the amount of trash we accumulate by using paper cups and plates. I don’t really like using plastic (just personal preference) and I certainly don’t trust my packing skills enough to take anything breakable! I’ve found the perfect solution here at The Southern Mercantile - our beautiful enamelware! By investing $36 in a set of four plates and four mugs, I’ll cut down on our trash for years to come, and I’m sure I’ve already spent that much on paper goods in the past!

As the mother of two busy, growing boys, I know how hectic life can be, running from work to sports practices and games, then to art lessons and church. I also know how important having dinner together at home is. According to www.familydinnerproject.org:


“Over the past 15 years researchers have confirmed what parents have known for a long time: sharing a family meal is good for the spirit, the brain and the health of all family members. Recent studies link regular family dinners with many behaviors that parents pray for: lower rates of substance abuse, teen pregnancy and depression, as well as higher grade-point averages and self-esteem. Studies also indicate that dinner conversation is a more potent vocabulary-booster than reading, and the stories told around the kitchen table help our children build resilience. The icing on the cake is that regular family meals also lower the rates of obesity and eating disorders in children and adolescents.”

Here are my 5 tips for how to make Family Dinner happen, in spite of busy schedules:

1. Plan ahead.
I try to take the time on Sunday evening to look through our family’s schedule for the next week to determine which nights we can eat at home and which nights we’ll have to eat out. I plan my meals based on the amount of time I will have to cook each evening. (This also helps our family budget, which makes my hubby happy!) My family’s favorite meal on a night I don’t have a lot of time is nachos. We each choose our own toppings, from ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese. We also love to add sour cream and homemade salsa and guacamole. Make sure you’re signed up for our email list and join our Recipe Club to receive a Recipe Card with our Homemade Salsa and Guacamole recipes!