Author: Tracey

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Day 3 (and almost my last)

I thought it might take a little longer, but Day 3 was the moment Louise tried to kill me. I should have known something was amiss when she returned to the campsite with a trail of cheap wine from Walgreen’s that led to the back of a rented white U-Haul cargo van. The fact that […]

Column, Travel

Day 2–St. Louis/KC

The first question people usually ask when they hear about this trip is whether or not we ever burn ourselves on the crack pipe we surely must be smoking to attempt this. The second most frequently asked is if the RV is hard to drive. The answer to that (and the first question, of course) […]

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Day 1-St. Louis

We gave new meaning to the concept of Western Expansion today as Thelma and Louise safely crossed the Mississippi with 8 kids in tow on Day 1 of the Crazy Tour. So far, so good. While the 5 hour trip took closer to 8, I blame that on an extra lunch stop in the parking […]

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The Trip

We are firing up the ol’ blog today in an effort to chronicle the epic road trip in which 13 people—9 of them kids—load up in an RV and attempt to navigate the next 5000 western miles and still remain coherent, contributing members of society when we pull back into the driveway a month from […]

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Summer.

This has been a big mixed bag of a school year for us. We’ve had tremendous fun—lots of regular season hockey, the All-Star Game, and a deep playoff run with accompanying travel and tailgate parties. We had a lot of charitable projects we were thankful to be involved with. The kids all were on teams […]

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Election Day 2014

Me: Yes, I saw the sign outside that said there was wine on the ballot, so I’d like whatever smoky Cabernet you have, please. Polling Worker: What? This is an election precinct in the middle of the day, ma’am. That would be highly inappropriate. Me: You’re right, it is before noon. I’ll take a Pinot […]

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Halloween was a little hollow in 1979

More and more frequently, I’ll recall a warm childhood memory and as I’m regarding now in my parental mind’s eye, I can’t help but stop and think, “What the hell?” We didn’t grow up in a bad area of town. On the contrary–it was a nice suburban Michigan home in a subdivision filled with large […]

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Your Incomplete Guide to Buying a Used RV

I think our marriage has a pretty typical division of domestic labor: my husband is generally in charge of purchasing the automotive needs of the family, my job is to drive the kids around thousands of miles while crushing Goldfish crackers all over the back seat. It works for us. So it was pretty out […]