Category: Travel

Apples to Apples Games

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This summer while we were on vacation we played a LOT of games.  One of my favorites was this card game that my Mama found on one of her thrifting hunts.  This game is AWESOME and I highly recommend it!  If you can’t find one at a yard sale or thrift store (I’ve been looking since June when we got home from vacation and still haven’t found one) Amazon just dropped the price on theirs to $9.00 with free shipping if you have Prime.  If you don’t have Amazon Prime you can sign up to get a free trial with free 2-day shipping here.

I’m going to add this one to my cart and force ask my people nicely to play it with me!  You know that after I order this I’ll find three next week.  🙂

Mattel Games Apples to Apples Party Box - FFPDo you have a favorite game you play with your people?

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Catching up….

Published on by Tracie2 Comments

Hello my friends!  It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?  Let’s do some catching up.

We were away last week on a much awaited vacation and it’s hard – HARD – to get back into the groove of everyday life.

Sunrise and moonset at the same time.  Life is such a dichotomy isn’t it?  The photos above and below were taken at the same time, just in different directions.  I LOVE it.

We did a lot of sitting in the surf in our beach chairs, one of my favorite activities.

We spent an entire day at Brookgreen Gardens, which will have to be an entire post itself.  If you haven’t heard of this place ( I hadn’t ), you need to spend a day here.  Make sure to bring sunscreen.  This is a note to myself.  I burned myself to a crisp.

We ate, and ate and ate yummy food.

We played games and laughed like lunatics, swam in the pool, walked on the beach at daybreak and at sunset, looked at jellyfish close up, and learned that if one stings you to sit in the wet sand and cover the sting with said wet sand…..Thanks surfer dude lifeguard.

I didn’t post about our grocery budget last week because all the money I spent was vacation related and I don’t count that in my grocery budget.  I also didn’t post what we ate last week either.  It was a mishmash of cooking in our rental house and eating out.  Heavy on the eating at our rental.  Number one:  it cuts down on cost.  But number two and most important to my people:  we are almost all of us homebodies who don’t like other people.  Hahaha.  That’s not true.  Maybe.

The reality is this:  we have 11 people to feed.  Taking 11 people out to eat is a very intricate and delicately done thing.

  1. You have to allow time for all ELEVEN people to primp and get themselves together.
  2. You have to allow time for all ELEVEN people to be transported to the restaurant.
  3. You have to allow time for all ELEVEN people to be seated at said restaurant.
  4. You have to allow time for all ELEVEN people to order food, wait for the food, eat the food and journey back home again.

As you can see, all of this takes TIME.  Time is finite and precious in my world.  It’s better spent sitting around doing nothing more than looking at my most precious people’s faces and talking; swimming, walking the beach, sitting in the surf, digging in the sand, playing card games, and laughing like lunatics.  Which is very, very difficult in a restaurant with eleven people.

In other news, Denton has been scheduled for an MRI next week.  Say a prayer for him if you would.  He is in a LOT of pain.  The long and short of it is that they believe he has a blown (herniated) disc in his back.  It could stem from the motorcycle and bear incident, extreme fatigue combined with 100 hour workweeks and everyday life or countless other things that could be inserted here.  Life has a tendency to interrupt even the best laid plans.

I hope to get my groove back and start getting things done again.  But we shall see!  I hope you have a lovely and pain free weekend!

How to Save $$$ on Souvenirs

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I love traveling and seeing new places.  I also love saving money so that I can pay for those experiences.

Now, before you start feeling sorry for all of the souvenir shops that we avoid, rest assured we did not avoid them all.  We dropped about $100.00 on two hats, and a toboggan in just one store.  When you see something you truly like and know that you’ll probably never find another one of, BUY it.  It’s the little things in life that make my family happy.

Of course, my best source for souvenirs is thrift stores.  Especially the thrift stores in a tourist town.  I found all of the shirts you’ll see down below in ONE store.  I think there were at least twelve thrift stores in one of the many beach towns we stopped in, but even I don’t want to spend my entire vacation thrift shopping.  There are waves to stare at.  Safely from the sand.

As always, if you can’t wait to find one of these beauties at your own thrift store, click on the photo to be taken to that item.  Let’s see what we found!

Denton was very pleased when I came home with this one.  $2.49

Venice Beach.  It was a lovely beach.  Very different, but still a cool place to visit.  $1.25

I bought this one just so we would have a fun reminder of one of the most expensive meals we ate in California, in the pouring rain.  $1.25

The rest of the shirts don’t have anything to do with any of the places that we visited.  But, that doesn’t matter to anyone in my family.  We buy things that we like, that will still evoke a memory of that time and place.  And it will be a lovely thing.

One of Liv’s picks.  She loves anything to do with Canada and this will double as a dress for her, lol.   $2.49Denton was very happy with this find.  $4.49

I love this burnout material.  It is so soft and comfy.  Have you seen Stranger Things yet?  You should as soon as possible.  $2.49

I bought this shirt for me.  When I whipped it out and showed it to my family and said “Isn’t that funny”, they all looked at me blank-faced.  I said read it, and they all said, it says Karma.  No, no, no.  In tiny gold lettering, it also says, “Dear Karma, I Have a List of People You Missed.”  It feels like a cloud.  $3.49

I had no idea what this brand was, but Liv yanked it off the rack immediately.  Not because of the brand, but because she loves their logo.  Yes, I do live under a rock.  Apparently, Obey is a great brand.  $4.49

I think that’s it.  If I unearth anything else we picked up souvenir-wise I’ll add it to the list.  I also wanted to point out that you don’t have to wait until you get to your destination to pick up great deals either.

On one of the trips that we took the kids to Disney, I stocked up for six months before we left on t-shirts, stuffed animals and other souvenir goodies and then, once we were there brought out the new-to-them treasure’s.  Stuff is stuff, but the memories you make together will last throughout a lifetime.

Think of it this way.  I paid less than $25.00 for everything you see here.  ONE of the hats we bought at Pismo Beach cost more than all of this.  It’s an awesome hat, and I know that everything we bought there will be loved and worn for a long time.  But every dollar you save is another dollar towards a flight, an uber, a week-long subway ticket, etc.  It all adds up.

What’s your favorite souvenir from a vacation?  One of mine is a three-sided leather and brass barometer that I paid $3.00 for in Williamsburg, VA.  We were taking a break from the exhausting fun we were having at Busch Gardens and stumbled onto this awesome little thrift store.  The barometer was made in West Germany.  I love it and I keep it on my desk as a reminder of all the fun we had that week.

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Update and What Did You Miss?

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Hello!  Did you miss me?  Did you even notice that I was away?

For the past two weeks + we have been traveling.  We went to California to spend Thanksgiving with Denton’s family and then we spent some time exploring a new to us state.  California is a vast and alien place to this Virginia girl.  Have you been to California?  It is a stunningly beautiful place, but it’s so, so different from anything I’ve ever seen before.

I have a lot of things I want to share with you over the next little bit, so don’t be alarmed at how many post titles with start with the word California.

We are all utterly exhausted, but it’s back to the normal grind tomorrow.  I DO NOT recommend taking a red eye from the west coast to the east coast and then driving for two and a half hours.  It was one of the most draining experiences I’ve had, but all four of us handled it very well in my opinion.  It still absolutely astounds me that you can be on one side of the United States, get on a plane and be almost 2,700 miles away in under six hours.  Crazy town, people.

I’ll fill you in on all of the beautiful, disturbing, and awesomeness starting tomorrow when my brain is hopefully working again.  In the meantime, here are some of the things I actually got posted while we were away.

Here you’ll find all of my Instagram post’s:

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Bucket list….. Check…….. In-N-Out Burger 🍔 Yum

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Ventura Pier

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It’s still so bizarre to see mountains at the ocean.

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Here are some of the quotes you may have missed:

Here are all of the lovely houses I found for us!

335 S Main St, Chatham, VA 24531

327 Bradenton Knl, Fletcher, NC 28732

705 A Ave, Vinton, IA 52349

7 Cantitoe Ln, Cherry Hills Village, CO 80113

222 Simmons St, Cambridge City, IN 47327

Here are some of my recipes:

And here is everything else:

FREE Forto Coffee Shot

I hope you had a great week!

Quick Tip: Hotel Soap

Published on by TracieLeave a comment

Denton and I returned my niece and nephew to my brother this past Friday after a two-week stay with us – two weeks for the nephew and 1 week for the niece since she was at camp the first week – does anyone else have this compulsion to be exact with your words or is it just me?

We took the opportunity to spend the night in a lovely hotel in a gorgeous little town about an hour and a half from where I grew up.  Do you ever do that?  Spend vacation time in a place very near you, but not near enough that you actually explore it?  We normally don’t, but have decided that we are definitely going to start.  I’m already planning out next trip.  That’s another story altogether.

What I wanted to talk about today is hotel soap.  The small soaps that they provide for you in your hotel that are designed for your overnight stay.  That are always left over, because who uses the entire thing in one night?  There are a couple of reasons that I bring this up.  Firstly, I can NOT throw them away.  I am the girl who takes the sliver of soap that’s left in my shower and sticks it to the new bar so that it doesn’t get wasted.  It drives Denton bonkers, but I just can’t do it.  I have a problem.  I know it, Denton knows it and now you know it.  And I’m okay with that.

Second, do you know how many hotel rooms there are in the world?  When I asked Siri, this is the article from 2012 that she sent me to.  Taking that into consideration, you know that the number of hotels has grown exponentially.  The article estimated that in 2012 there were 17.5 MILLION guest rooms around the world.  That is a lot of little soaps, people.

All of that is to say that I never leave them, or throw them away.  I always bring them home with me.  But, that can be problematic.  I never remember until I’m in the hotel that I plan to do this, so what do you do with a small, wet, soapy thing?  I don’t want it in my makeup bag, or thrown in with my clothes.  This trip I had an epiphany.  The bag they provide you with for your ice machine bucket is the perfect carrier for wet, tiny soaps.  Or the plastic sleeve that’s going to be tossed from the coffee cup next to the Keurig. 

Or the sleeve from the water glasses.  Even the fancy hotel we stayed in when we went to Washington D.C. to buy my Honda Pilot had plastic over their glass water goblets in the bathroom.  I understand that they want you to know that those things are sterile, but seriously.  And yes, I drive hundreds of miles to purchase my new to me cars.  You can read all about how I forced sweetly asked Denton to drive two states over to buy Hayden’s car a few years ago.

Barring all of those options – hahaha – I believe that I’ll go slip a normal Ziploc baggie into our luggage so I’ll have it for next time.

In case you’ve stuck around through all of my squirrel moments this time, here is an interesting article that I found while I was trying to discover how many hotels exist in our world.  I can’t emphasize enough that individuals change the world.  One tiny bar of hotel soap at a time.  It’s disheartening to look around at everything that’s wrong with our little planet.  I tell Hayden and Olivia all the time, you can’t fix ALL of the world’s problems, but if you can do one thing, do it, because that could be the catalyst to actually change the world.  You never know what people are dealing with in their lives, so smile at everyone and be kind.  That’s my two cents for the day.

So.  Are you kooky like me and bring your hotel soap home with you or do you leave them at the hotel to be trashed?  Actually, don’t tell me.  My frugal self may not be able to take it if you guys are normal people and just leave them.

Bridge Day 2015 | New River Gorge, West Virginia

Published on by Tracie2 Comments

Have you ever been to Bridge Day?  Have you even heard of Bridge Day?!?  When we moved to our tiny town 10 years ago, I don’t think that I had ever heard about it, or if I had that it eve registered in my brain what it is.

Then my Daddy said very casually one day, “Hey, you should take the kids to the New River Gorge Bridge, it’s pretty cool.”  So we did.  And it was astounding.  Amazing.  Crazy.  Breathtaking.  And it wasn’t Bridge Day!

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I have to say, if you want to have a relaxing experience of the bridge in all of its glory, go on a day that isn’t Bridge Day.  There are just so. many. people.  But, you need to go on the weekend that they are holding Bridge Day too.  It’s A-MAZING.

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The New River Gorge Bridge is located just outside Fayetteville, West Virginia.  The bridge is 876 feet ABOVE the New River.  Did you read that?  876 feet.  On Bridge Day they shut both sides of Highway 19 down and let people JUMP OFF OF IT!!!  Want a visual of just how high that really is?

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Yeah.  We didn’t jump off of the bridge and it was exhilarating.  I cannot even imagine the thrill that the people who were jumping were getting.  Crazytown, people, crazy. town.

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As you approach on the day, you will be very aware that you are not going to be able to drive across the bridge.  They have it clearly stated along the way.

IMG_9657Since you can’t drive to the bridge and they don’t want 50,000 cars lined along the highway, they provide shuttles for $3.00 and will drop you at the entrance to the bridge.  You can park at the local Wal-Mart or five other places you can read about here.

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The day we were there, our shuttle was a school bus.  I don’t think I’ve been on a school bus since I was in the tenth grade.  They’ve changed a lot!  Did you know that school buses now are automatic’s!?  Every school bus I have ever been on was a stick shift.

When they drop you off, you’ll have to walk down the highway to actually get to the bridge.  Try to keep yourself away from the welding helmeted man with the kettle corn.  You can try. 😀

And the Hillbilly Hot Dogs.

AND the thousands of people.

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It’s truly not a long walk to the actual bridge.

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I thought this was pretty ironic.  You know, since there can be up to 100,000 people walking it on Bridge Day.

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Good reminders along the way, especially if you have small children.

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Here are some things you may see on the way…..

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How.  How do you lose your shoe, adult person, and not realize it?

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And you are there!  Lots of people will be hanging over the rails, watching the people who have just jumped.  It’s a very long bridge.  My advice is to head straight to the platform they have built over the edge for the jumpers.

This is where I thought most of the excitement of the day happened.

Two people taking the plunge.  See the guys hand in the air?  Yeah, he’s already airborne!

This guy.  From what I gathered, he had been there all day.  Watching people, jump, waiting, watching people jump and waiting.  He was gathering his nerve.

He stood there a LONG time.  But he did it!

I mean, come on!  Look at that.  Seriously, I honestly don’t think I could ever do it.  Do you see that tiny red and white bull’s eye down there?

Yeah, there.  That’s what they are supposed to aim for.  Go back and look at the previous picture.  Those are humans next to it.  Uh-huh.

This poor guy didn’t make it to the bull’s eye.  He landed in the water.  That’s what all of the boats are there for.  To get people out of the river.  The frigid river.  We had winter gear on and it was still cold.  I can’t imagine what the river felt like.  But these guys did it over and over.  Jump, land, ride the bus back up, get on the platform and jump again.

If you’ve never been to Bridge Day I HIGHLY recommend it.  There are a lot of other things happening during the weekend too and you can read all about the plans they have for 2018 here.  Have fun!

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Pike Place Market

Published on by TracieLeave a comment

On August 17 in 1907 Pike Place Market opened in Seattle, Washington.

I keep a running list of things to see and do when I visit a certain place.  Seattle is on my bucket list of cities to see and I absolutely want to visit this farmers market when I go there.

Have you been?  Did you love it or hate it?  Anything special about it that I need to know before I visit?  I can’t rest until I know all the facts!

One thing I do know about it is that it is one of the oldest continuously operated public farmers’ markets in the United States.  Woohoo!  I love things like this.

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5 Things You MUST Have in New York on Vacation

Published on by Tracie4 Comments

Note:  As always if you see something you like, click on the photos and it will take you to like items.   This post may contain affiliate links.  Check out what that means to you here.

These are the five things that I believe that you absolutely need to have with you no matter where you are on vacation.  They are especially essential in New York.  See if you agree with what made my top five list.

Number 1:  A good camera strap.

To carry that heavy camera around.  I love the one above.  It’s beautiful and functional, both requirements in my book.

Funny story.  I decided that I didn’t need to take my camera strap with me to New York.  Apparently I had a brain lapse.  Believe me, you need a camera strap.  That camera will get very, very heavy after a few hours.  I finally resorted to using my purse strap as a camera strap.  It worked in a pinch, but I don’t recommend a narrow strap like that.

Do yourself a favor, and buy yourself a lovely strap that you will want to use.

I also love all of these.

You can find more here and here.

Number 2:  A small wristlet purse.

 
To keep petty cash, metro cards, snacks – nuts, hard candies, a candy bar – your insurance card, identification, etc.  All things you need to have on you.  Like candy bars.
I started out carrying my cross body purse and that lasted exactly one day.   Something that you don’t think twice about carting from the car to the store becomes extremely heavy after a few hours.  I was so glad I had my wristlet with me.
One of the best tips I read about before we left was to never place your purse on the back of your chair.  That’s an excellent way to easily be robbed.  Carrying my wristlet solved this problem, because I just laid it beside my plate or in my lap whenever we stopped for a meal.  It was always in plain sight.  With the added benefit of being light and easy to carry.
You can find more here.
Number 3:  Water, water, water
You will not believe how much water you will consume.  Even Hayden, who used to avoid water like it had the plague in it, drank gallons.  Being a tourist is thirsty work.  Take a bottle with you everywhere.
Number 4:  Good walking shoes.
You will walk and walk and walk and walk some more.   And just when you think that you can’t go another foot, you will walk a few more miles.  This has to be why people in New York are so fit.  All they do is walk!
You can find more here.
Number 5:  Sunscreen.
You are definitely going to need it.  We were in New York the first week of June and we had perfect weather.  Perfect in my opinion.  High’s in the 60’s with lots of cloud cover.  Hoodie weather.  Not most people’s ideal, but mine for sure.  We still needed sunscreen.
So what makes your top five list for vacation?  How does it compare to mine?

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When things don’t go exactly as you planned. New York.

Published on by Tracie11 Comments

We’re home!!

We spent the last 9 days in New York City (one of the days was spent in Philadelphia, PA) and we had a blast.  We are already planning a return trip, because seriously, you could never see, do, taste, smell and just absorb everything there is in NYC in that short amount of time.

I took the photo above after we had walked the Brooklyn Bridge.  In 83* weather, with thousands of other people.  At one point, while we were trying to get a photo of us all, Hayden says, Mom, stop trying to make this into something fun.  No one on this bridge is having fun.  Hahaha, he was wrong, I saw plenty of people having fun on the bridge, but he was right too.  It was hot, we were miserable and it had been a long, long, week at that point.

I am slowly posting about everything that we saw, ate, and did – I’m also putting New York in the title of those post’s in case you have no interest in what we saw and did and  you can skip it.

What I wanted to ramble on about today is expectations.  And what we get out of those expectations.

I freely admit that I had a lot of expectations going into this trip.  I always do!  I feel like if you don’t have a plan, any kind of a plan, you are already halfway into the weeds (Gordon Ramsey reference) and probably aren’t going to get anything accomplished.  Denton knows this about me.  He is not a planner, he loves to fly by the seat of his pants.  That makes me cringe.  We know this about one another.

To head off a lot of arguments, we had a conversation before we even started packing the car for the trip.  He didn’t want me to plan out every single moment  – of every single day of our trip.  I didn’t want to get home from our Big New York Vacation and realize that we had just wandered around like chicken’s with our heads cut off and didn’t even remember what we had done.

So we compromised.  I made a list of all the things that we definitely wanted to do and see on this first foray into the city with the understanding that it was just a guideline for us to follow when we felt like it.

I feel like this is the first time that we got it right.  He wasn’t stressed out (too much) by my big list of things to check off, and I felt comfortable that we were actually going to see and do and eat at least some of the things on our my giant list.

One of the things that made this possible was the map I created on google maps that was personalized to us.  I shared it with everyone, that way we could see in an instant what was around us that we definitely wanted to see and do.  I used this tutorial to make ours and it worked perfectly!

The first thing that knocked us for a flip on this trip was Hayden getting sick.  He wasn’t feeling well on Thursday.  By Friday when we got to Philadelphia he was feeling very nauseous.  By Saturday when we had to check out of our hotel (which was AMAZING!) he was feeling really, really bad.

We made the decision to go ahead to New York and assess things there.  By Sunday morning we had already scoped out the nearest Urgent Care facility and were waiting on a doctor.  They ran a lot of tests, did blood work, did more tests, then more blood work and finally advised us to take him back to our brownstone, keep him hydrated and if his symptoms worsened to take him immediately to the ER, where they could admit him and do a better workup.

He slowly improved each day and now he is feeling absolutely normal.   In addition to this stressful situation Denton’s back decided it didn’t like being normal and tried to rearrange itself.  His solution was to eat Ibuprofen like Smarties.  That worked.

All of that to say that nothing went as planned.  Like having to pay to use the restroom.

Unusual food that you really didn’t like.  I hate wasting food and money.

We saw the beautiful memorial where the twin towers were, but had to skip the enormous lines for the museum.   

We had great pizza, but missed so many more that we had planned for.

We went up into the One World Observatory, but were really disappointed and wished we had spent the time and money at the Rockefeller building or the Empire State building.

We didn’t have the time or energy to go and see St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but stumbled upon St. Paul’s Chapel completely by accident.

We also never made it to Dumbo or the Flea Market in that area.  😥 

Sitting in traffic for over an hour to get out of the city.

The whole point of this post though is to show you this.

We passed by this rosebush every single time we trekked our way to the Subway every day.  There are so many gorgeous gardens in Brooklyn, that I was amazed. 

Life is a journey.

While you are ticking things off of your list, don’t forget to stop and smell the roses, and take pictures of them too!  Those moments are the ones that are standing out in my mind already.

This was a truly amazing trip for all of us – we all actually agreed!  I am so glad that I convinced Denton to step out of his comfort zone (he is very, very protective of all of us – hence being very uncomfortable in a city with millions of people to watch out for!) and now we can’t wait to go back.

Enjoy every moment!  Even the hot, irritating ones while you are trudging along the Brooklyn Bridge with thousands of other people!

This post is linked up on……

Wander Mum

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The Price of a Restroom. $2.17. New York.

Published on by Tracie1 Comment

Sorry for the blurriness of the photo.  It was done very quickly, because of a time constraint.

$2.17.  That is the going rate to use a restroom in New York City.

We were in Chinatown and realized that we had no idea where a bathroom was and asked a New York City Patrolman who was standing nearby, who directed us to the local McDonald’s.

As we entered the three story building a guard – uhmm – employee was shouting “Paying customers only!” and directing everyone into the line to order.  So I quickly ordered the first cheap item that popped into my head.  A small ice cream cone.

Only then, after showing our receipt were we allowed to go upstairs to the restrooms.

After Hayden and I came out of the bathrooms, we found Denton and Olivia sitting at a table, where Denton informed me that we had a time limit of 7 minutes to consume said ice cream cone.  Seven minutes!!!  He said the same dragon guard lady told them as they ascended the stairs that the time limit started from the time of the receipt.  Wow!

I suppose that it is a small price to pay for the privilege of using indoor plumbing, but REALLY?!?

A friend of mine laughed and told me about an app that you can get – it’s free – that will tell you where free bathrooms are in your vicinity.  I immediately downloaded it, but didn’t need it for the rest of our trip.

You live and you learn something new every day!

Also, this!  How crazy, strange, weird and freaky!  Our customer number was the same as our total.  Yep, I am a strange person for finding this amazing.

Has this ever happened to any of you?  Inquiring minds want to know.

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