As I mentioned the other day, the family and I packed up and journeyed to visit Denton, Texas last week.  My beautiful sister in law got married over the weekend!

I wasn’t quite sure what to do in our free time while we were in Denton, so I reached out to the Denton Visitor’s Bureau so we could plan our trip.  They were very gracious in providing some ideas for our family.

We quickly discovered that Denton had much to offer for families, many of which was FREE!  When traveling as a family of seven, free is always my favorite 🙂

Denton Firefighters’ Museum:

The first thing we checked out was the Denton Firefighters’ Museum.  This museum was small, but offered a ton of information!  As many of you know, our family is a huge supporter of first responders.  My husband is a deputy and my brother is a fireman.

In the Firefighters’ Museum, they have memorabilia from the 1800s to present day.

One of our favorite exhibits was a beam from the World Trade Center and we also liked seeing all the different uniforms that were used over the years.

All the kids can get a Denton fire hat at the museum as well.  The kids loved this – all except my youngest.  I think he wants to be a policeman instead! 😉

After the museum, you can walk right over to the working fire station and get a tour and check out all the firetrucks.  We found it interesting that they had a rescue bus.  Their rescue bus is mainly for the firefighters in case they are on a fire for a long time and they need to get in the AC for a bit to refresh or get some water.  Great idea!

The Denton Firefighters’ Museum is FREE, but there is a box on the wall if you’d like to make a donation.

Denton County Museum:

We also walked down to the old courthouse, which hosts the Denton County Museum.  Seeing the history of the town was incredible.  They also had a kids’ craft corner that the kids just loved!  They could draw, stamp, or make other creations.

There is also a train that the kids and adults can drive around.  I didn’t make it upstairs with the baby, but my husband and several of the kids went upstairs and found many exciting exhibits.

SpringHill Suites Denton:

During our stay, we had the pleasure of staying at the beautiful SpringHill Suites Denton hotel.  This hotel is very well maintained and the staff couldn’t be more friendly!  They were always on top of everything that we needed and more!

I was super thrilled after the long drive from Georgia to Texas to have the crib all set up for Simon and a couple bath toys waiting for him!  This hotel offers complimentary baby wash and lotion if you have forgotten it on your journeys.  It came in handy!

SpringHill Suites Denton has a shuttle to take you within 5 miles of the hotel so you can visit the city of Denton with ease.  We never waited more than a few minutes for a ride or a pickup throughout our stay.

The complimentary breakfast buffet at the hotel was delicious.  There were always plenty of options from oatmeal, cereal, eggs, yogurt, fruit, and more.  My kids absolutely loved that the waffles were in the shape of Texas!  How fun is that!

Restaurants:

During our visit, we ate at numerous restaurants to taste the local food, but a couple in particular stood out.

My husband is completely in love with Bet the House BBQ.  He ordered their brisket and felt it was one of the best he’s ever had.

We also ate at Cartwright’s in downtown and were pleased with their food but even more pleased at their superb service.

Last but not least, my personal favorite was Beth Marie’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream!  Oh the choices!  So many choices!  Everything we tried was fantastic!  They make their own ice cream, so you know it must be good!

Final Thoughts:

Denton was a beautiful town to visit and we felt thoroughly welcomed.  We absolutely enjoyed our time and look forward to returning again in the future!

Huge thanks to the Denton Visitor’s Bureau for providing us with information on the wonderful things to do in town.  We will be back!

 

A couple weeks ago, the kids and I had the privilege of checking out the teamLab Future Park, which is currently at the Mall of Georgia.  To say that we had fun would be an understatement.  All of us had a blast!  I apologize for the lack of photos – we had so much fun and then my phone crashed and I lost most of my photos!

At the Future Park, there are several stations for your kids to enjoy.  Below is a video of my kids enjoying the Light Ball Orchestra.

 

The seven immersive works include:

• Sketch Aquarium: This installation explores the magic beneath the waves in a digitally-rendered aquatic world. A favorite among all ages, the immersive Sketch Aquarium allows guests to create drawings of sea creatures and watch them come to life in a virtual ocean. This dynamic artwork constantly grows and evolves as more visitors draw and add different images of sea creatures. The busy sea creatures swim around and interact with each other, and guests can even feed them by touching fish food bags on the screen.
• Create! Hopscotch for Geniuses: This immersive work is a fun game of discovery that tests the skills and imagination for guests of all ages. Attendees are invited to design their own customised hopscotch game in this installation by arranging circles, triangles and squares on an electronic tablet. These shapes are then projected onto the floor. When children land on the same shapes in succession, they will trigger beautiful colors and sounds that reverbrate throughout the space. Special connections exist between the shapes – guests will have to practice playing the game to discover what they are.
• Sketch Town: Sketch Town encourages adults and children alike to cooperate and inspire one another to meet the challenges of this urban setting installation. Sketch Town, a shared space, allows guests to create their own town landmarks by coloring paper drawings of buildings, cars, planes and even fantastical vehicles like spaceships and UFOs in a morphing town that grows and evolves. Children can interact with the townscape
  by touching individual components to alter their behavior.
• Sketch Town Papercraft: Guests can turn their 3-D Sketch Town crayon drawings of cars and buildings into papercraft patterns. By assembling the patterns, their pictures are transformed into an original 3-D papercraft model to take home and enjoy.
• A Table Where Little People Live: This installation features an interactive tabletop with “little people.” Children can sit or stand around the table, and they are encouraged to interact with the little people by placing objects on the screen. As each object is introduced, the movements of the little people change, causing them to jump, climb and even slide.
• Light Ball Orchestra: Guests of all ages use beachball-sized globes of multicolored light and sound as instruments in this electrifying, one-of-a-kind orchestra. Attendees can touch any ball to change the color and sound of the balls around it, creating a resonating effect throughout the dazzling environment. Children and adults will enjoy creating a playful and dynamic space with other visitors, as their participation with the Light Ball Orchestra sends out ripples in different directions to interact with each other. Guests will work together by pushing, bouncing and rolling the balls to continuously change the composition, color and sound of the orchestra.
• Connecting! Train Block: This installation allows attendees to design their own transportation network. Guests will first use physical wooden blocks to design and connect an evolving system of roads, rivers and railways to keep the ever-increasing traffic flowing smoothly. Then, as more blocks are connected on the table, more cars and trains appear, forming a bustling townscape. Children can play and interact by placing the blocks in different positions to create a town collaboratively with other guests.

Our favorites were the Sketch Town and the Sketch Aquarium, although my 6 year old loved the Create! Hopscotch best of all.  I totally loved coloring a truck and a squid and then seeing my creation show up on the screen!  You could even interact with your creation as well!  There was something for everyone to enjoy, including the adults!

Hours and Ticket Information:

Tickets to experience teamLab Future Park at Mall of Georgia are available onsite or online at bit.ly/MOG_teamLab. To guarantee admission and avoid long wait times, the mall highly recommends purchasing advance tickets online. General admission is FREE for children ages 0-2, $8 for children ages 3-13 and $12 for adults. Adults are not permitted to enter the exhibit without children. A discounted ticket rate of $10 is available to senior over 65-years-old and to students over 14-years-old with a valid student ID. Group rate admission for 10 or more people is $10 per adult and $6 per child. The exhibition will only be available at Mall of Georgia May 14 – July 31. Exhibition hours are as follows**:

May 14 – May 27*

• Monday – Thursday: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
• Friday – Saturday: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
• Sunday: 12 p.m. – 6 p.m.

*TeamLab will open from 1 p.m. – 6 p.m. on Sunday, May 15 due to a private event

May 28 – July 31

• Monday – Saturday: 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
• Sunday: Sunday: 12 p.m. – 6 p.m.

**Please visit simon.com/mall/mall-of-georgia/stores/teamlab-future-park to confirm hours of operation.

My sister in law is getting married tomorrow, so we took a road trip to Texas.  Can’t wait to tell you all about our adventures!  That will be coming next week after we get back home!

Lake Lanier recently invited our family to come check out their Winter Adventure activities. We had an absolute blast and it wasn’t crowded at all on the day we went!  For starters, we drove through the Magical Nights of Lights and then pulled off at Winter Adventure, which is where the water park is during summer.  Everything was so beautifully lit, it was like a magical winter land!

The kids, their aunt,  and my husband had a blast going down the water slides on sleds!  I had fun watching them while holding the baby.  The sled rides do require a helmet, so keep that in mind.  The “ice skating” was okay.  There isn’t any ice-  it’s just plastic you’re skating on. The kids had fun but my husband and his sister didn’t quite enjoy it.  They are used to real ice.

We spent most of our time down at the Fun Dunker zone, which had been turned into a snow playground.  There were little slides, snow ball makers, toys, and more.  The kids really liked it.

Another big hit was the Knockerball.  You get to climb inside a big bubble and try and knock your friends and family over.  We all had a blast!  Lots of hysterical laughing!

Want to see some of the sledding first hand?

My husband really enjoyed the zip lining. His sister did as well and you can hear her screaming a little in this video!

Big thanks to Lake Lanier Nights of Lights and Winter Adventure for hosting us!  We had an excellent time!

For more information, visit the Lanier World website.

We’ve always been huge fans of Chick-Fil-A, but now since we’ve been on the backstage home office tour, we are even bigger fans!  I had no idea that they even offered these tours, so I’m excited to tell you about them!

You have a choice between the Original and the Deluxe tour.  On the Original, you can learn the history of the Chick-fil-A founder, Truett Cathy, and the core values of the company with a visit to the History Museum.  This tour is FREE!  The Deluxe offers this plus you can experience Truett Cathy’s office, take a quick shuttle ride to see new product development in “The Kitchen” and visit the “Hatch” innovation center.  It is $15 per person.  Both require reservations.  You can find more about that HERE.

We took the Deluxe tour along with some other Chick-Fil-A mom bloggers today.  It was a ton of fun!  During the tour, we were even allowed to sample some top secret new items that will be rolling out next year!  How exciting is that!  I wish I could tell you about them, but I’m sworn to secrecy 🙂

The Story of Chick-fil-A^®  and founder, Truett Cathy, encompasses the BIG 3 ideas:

• Treat Others Right
• Make Smart Decisions
• Maximize Your Potential

Throughout the tour, you’ll see these ideas expressed.

Chick-Fil-A has a huge warehouse called the Hatch Innovation Center that they use for training.  In this warehouse, they actually have 3 prototype working restaurants for training!  These were pretty neat to see!  Everyone was bustling around making sure that everything went smoothly and finding out ways to make the restaurants work more efficient.  They even had a fake drive-thru where they used trikes instead of cars.  We could see a lot of the neat ideas that are being tossed around at Chick-Fil-A from future restaurant designs to uniform ideas.

On top of everything in the warehouse, EVERYONE was so happy!  All of the employees were genuinely happy!  We even witnessed a group of employees sitting down for a Bible study together!  How many other jobs offer that!?  Our tour guide told us that they have miles of walking trails throughout the campus and also a fishing pond.  If someone has a bad day, they are free to go for a walk to clear their head or even go fishing!  Working out at the wellness center is also an option.  My husband was about ready to switch jobs 😉  He especially wanted to work in the kitchen where they sample food daily and work on creating new an exciting menu item!  We were able to sample the new Greek yogurt that is rolling out right now and it was very good!  Twice the protein and half the sugar!

We loved seeing all the fun cars and even the Batmobile in the “Moo-Seum”.  So many beautiful collectable cars!  Up in Truett Cathy’s office, we heard stories about the Cathy family and the kids were even invited to sit at his desk.  The flag was given to Truett from soldiers in Operation Enduring Freedom.  So much history, so many interesting facts!  I think we will have to take another trip just to have time to see everything in more depth!

Of course, no trip is complete without taking a picture on their billboard!  Don’t worry, this was on the ground, not up in the air!

Big thanks to Chick-Fil-A to having us out for the day!  We had a great time!  Can’t wait to come back!

Again, if you’re interested in taking a FREE Original or $15 Deluxe Tour, visit their website.

A few days ago, I started telling you about our first day in Fayetteville, North Carolina.  Today I will continue on with our 2nd day in Fayetteville.  We started the day with a wonderful complimentary breakfast at Fairfield Inn & Suites – Fayetteville North.  The food was great and there was a nice variety available.

From there, we ventured on to Fascinate-U Kids Museum. Fascinate-U is a hands-on children’s museum located in historical downtown Fayetteville, North Carolina. For almost two decades, it has been a destination where children have been able to explore their world through creative role-playing, manipulation, and interaction with each other and their environment.  My little girls had an absolute blast pretending and imagining at the museum.  There were so many different things to do and to be!

For lunch before leaving Fayetteville, we were invited by New Deli.   You know a restaurant is awesome when it is super busy at lunch time with people waiting for a table and lots of to-go orders!  They were hopping!

New Deli is known for their incredible dessert apples, but I was personally impressed with their allergy friendly idea.  They do not have a list of allergens on their breads, so I wasn’t able to risk it for my son, but our awesome waitress suggested making some ham and cheese roll-ups for him instead!  What a simple idea and he was thrilled!  She even warmed them up a little so it was nice and cheesy.  Very pleased with their service!

The dessert apples are giant apples on a stick rolled in all sorts of candies and goodness!  We tried the Apple Pie, which is their most popular, the Reeses, and the Rocky Road.  We loved all of them, but we have to agree with everyone else on the Apple Pie being #1!  We badly need a New Deli here in Athens, GA!  I think it would go over super well!

Thanks again so much to the  Fayetteville, North Carolina visitors bureau for setting up this incredible trip for us and helping us feel so incredibly at home in your wonderful city!  We had a fantastic time and look forward to visiting again!  Thanks again also to all the wonderful sponsors of this trip.  You can find all of their links below:

•  Fayetteville, North Carolina
•  Airborne and Special Operations Museum Foundation
• North Carolina Veteran’s Park
• Fairfield Inn & Suites – Fayetteville North
•  The Mash House
• Fascinate-U Kids Museum
• New Deli