Amundsons

Holidays hold our traditions.  It’s why we buy Cadbury eggs at Easter even though no one likes them, how the candy corn industry can make a full year of profits at Halloween, and why any Thanksgiving without turkey is just called Thursday.  Of the holiday traditions, there are none that come close to the big one. In the lineup of holiday traditions, Christmas takes the gold (then makes it glittery and twinkly).  These traditions are important, in a chaotic world they provide consistency.  Every year we go to Danikens for our tree, and my grandma’s Christmas angel sits on the top of that tree.   She has sat on top of Christmas trees before I was born and if my daughters have their way long after I die, she is tradition.  Nana’s cookies, presents, watching 24 hours straight of FixerUpper with Grammie, stockings, making a Snowman with Grandpa, candy canes, sledding with Papa, and hours and hours of cousin time arguing over checkers, it all adds up to one word-...

We have tried to stay as close to the girls' school curriculum from Greenville as possible. As an educator, I know the value of sticking with a scope and sequence, so I was a little apprehensive about how we would pull this off while traveling out of backpacks.  But when I saw that 6th grade was studying Volcanos and 2nd grade had Christopher Columbus on their list I kind of chuckled.  As a teacher, I would spend hours trying to create experiential learning and this trip was giving it to me on a silver platter (silver mined from a volcano and stolen from the new world). Teaching on a boat is the best kind of adventure! First up: Volcanos Our ship had its disembarkation on the volcanic island of Guadeloupe, giving us a full day to climb La Grande Soufrière.  After getting soft and eating too many Italian cannolis on the ship, I was rethinking my philosophy on experiential learning.  If the Camino was a marathon, climbing a volcano is a sprint going straigh...

Back when Jake and I were at the beginning stages of planning this year we realized we were going to need to somehow get from Europe to the Caribbean.  The sticker shock of an airplane ticket from Spain to the Dominican Republic left us wondering just how far the girls could swim.  Somewhere I heard rumor of something called a Repositioning Cruise.  Cruise ships like to sail around the Mediterranean in the late summer and fall, because of those hurricanes in the Caribbean (sounds like Business 101 to me).  Then when the weather gets cold in the Mediterranean, they head to the tropics for Christmas (Business 102).  This means huge fleets of ships are heading across the Atlantic in Nov/Dec.  The ships would be empty, but someone who took Business 201 decided to give amazing discounts and fill the ships with people who have more time than money (i.e. retired Europeans and the Amundsons).  When we realized all four of us could take a 17-day inclusive ...