Travel

Most of the time, I can pack in 30 minutes or less and I usually nail it. I almost always wear just about everything in my bag, except maybe an extra pair of undies or shoes that I brought ‘just in case’. I’ve traveled all over the world, and for extended periods of time, with just a carry-on.

If you’ve been following my social media or the other 100+ mommy bloggers, you know that we just wrapped up the Social Media on the Sand 2019 conference. So what is social media on the sand? And who are these Beaches Moms?

I can’t believe it’s already been two months since Ieft Puerto Vallarta. I’ve been lucky enough to travel to a lot of different place around the world, but very few of them have stuck with me like Puerto Vallarta has. There was something so magical about the city, something I can’t even quite describe.

A few weeks ago, I traveled to Portland for work. Just like my last trip, I only had about 30 hours in the city. As I learned last time, it’s pretty amazing what you can do with 30 hours in a city. Since I was able to see so much last time, I decided to do a little day trip to check out Cannon Beach.

Last week, Disneyland invited me to attend their opening night of Oogie Boogie Bash at California Adventure Park. I’ve never been to Halloween at Disneyland or Disney World before, so I had no idea what to expect. What I did learn was that I definitely want to visit Disneyland every single Halloween, it was that special.

Full disclosure, I’m a Marriott fan. With all my work travels over the last 4 years, I’ve managed to earn status at Marriott with their Bonvoy program. I’ve always had exceptional service at Marriott hotels, so when I found out we were going to stay at the Marriott Puerto Vallarta on our press trip, I was beyond excited. The Marriott Puerto Vallarta exceeded all of my expectations, so I wanted to share with you the 5 reasons I’d definitely stay there again.

A couple weeks ago, I was invited to visit Puerto Vallarta for the first time. I’ve been to Mexico before, but only right across the U.S. boarder. I previously visited Nogales, Rosarito, Tijuana and Ensenada. But all of those cities are driveable from Arizona and California. We took little day trips or weekend trips, but this was my first time flying to a Mexican resort destination.

Last week, I wrote about our time in the Twin Cities. We spent half of our trip at my sister’s house there. Then, we spent the next week at my parents’ house in Green Bay, WI, which is also my hometown. It was the first time I was home in 4 years and it was my first time bringing both of my kids with me back home. Given it’s where I’m from, I knew there were a lot of fun things to do with kids in Green Bay Wisconsin. So I set out to show them some of my favorite childhood things and also experience some new ones.

My sister lives in the twin cities. My kids and I visited for a couple weeks earlier this summer, so we had a chance to explore a lot both Minneapolis and St. Paul. I love visiting the Twin Cities in the summer because there is so much to do, especially with young kids. It was rather hot while I was there, so we looked for fun ways to cool off and keep the kids entertained. Here are 8 fun kid-friendly things to do in the Twin Cities in the summer.