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TGIF! #CoffeeTalk

fall morning in pennsylvania

Yesterday I was feeling more like myself, and last night I had a lovely time with some ladies from my church at our Bible Study. That was a real pick-me-up, and I’m glad I was able to host because my husband had a work commitment so I wouldn’t have been able to attend otherwise.

I spent yesterday morning figuring out what we want to do for our vacation… I’m appreciating more and more the “built-in vacations” we have always had. When we got married, my husband’s family would always spend a week at the Jersey Shore, and my family always goes to Maine. With those two vacations every year, we never had a need to plan our own. Plus, my mom occasionally brings us all to Disney World. Spoiled much? Yes, we are. Thus, we have never truly planned a major family vacation. Sure, we take weekend trips here and there, and occasionally we’ve been invited to experience a hotel or resort as “press” to facilitate an editorial feature on the blog… but I’ve never had to plan a trip from scratch before.

I was getting overwhelmed with where to go, and after talking it over with a friend I decided it is either Phoenix/Grand Canyon in April or Yellowstone in June… basically because of the weather. It all became clear where we should go when until I started pricing out plane tickets and hotel rentals in Yellowstone.

OH. MY. WORD.

Not only are the prices astronomical, but most hotels were full during the dates we would want to go. WHAT!??

I guess people plan waaaaay in advance for this trip. So that settled it. We will do Phoenix this year during our spring break in April and we will plan a big Yellowstone adventure for June 2016.

I have NEVER planned ANYTHING over a year in advance. Heck, I have never planned anything 6 months in advance — not even Disney. So this is crazy to me, but I am already seeing a purpose in planning ahead. I’m gathering tons of advice and taking my time, and it will also allow us more time to save up and budget for it because I have a feeling it’s going to be a doozie.

Right now I’m gathering advice for an April Arizona trip, and then when that’s behind us, I’ll start thinking about the Yellowstone thing for the summer of 2016.

In other news… my foot hurt all afternoon and evening yesterday… the one with the stress fracture. I don’t know WHAT is up with that??!!! It hasn’t hurt like that… well, really at all through this entire process. Even lying in bed totally at rest, it was throbbing last night. Please tell me it’s normal to have some pain as it heals. Because if I have done something to it again and have to go back in a boot for Turks & Caicos, I might finally crumble. This is getting so very old. I have no idea what I could have done. I wore sneakers all day and worked from home.

This morning it’s alright. I put the boot on. We shall see… I do have a big weekend coming up, hosting my daughter’s birthday, which will require some grocery shopping and standing up doing food prep, and then of course one rarely sits when one is hosting an event. So. I hope I can manage without setting myself back on recovery time.

And as if there isn’t enough going on right now… changing my URL from musingsofahousewife.com to jolynnedev.wpenginepowered.com has caused Pinterest to mark all my pins going to musingsofahousewife.com as spammy links – because they all redirect to jolynnedev.wpenginepowered.com, and that sets off red flags in spam land.

spammy link

That means I am losing a lot of Pinterest traffic!!! That is huge for me. Not only is it sad to look at my stats, but I want people to find what they’re looking for. I’ve emailed Pinterest to get them to fix the issue – not sure if they even can do that. But naturally I have had no response.

So this morning I’ve been going back through some of my more popular pins and editing to change them to my new url. And I’m going through my popular posts and pinning those again so my new url is the link. Like I have time for that!! 

Basically, I have to start over because only pins that go straight to jolynnedev.wpenginepowered.com are working right now.

How can you help? Why, thanks for asking!! If you are on Pinterest and you are particularly fond of any of my recipes or fashion looks or crafts or vacation posts… anything with a pretty pinnable image… if you can pin it again, or for the first time, that would be super fabulous.

Not sure where to begin? Here is a page with my most popular posts.

I know not everyone is into Pinterest, but if you are, this would be super helpful. xoxoxo

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19 Responses

  1. So lucky for me that you’re sharing your vacation decisions…I’m in the exact same situation….AZ is on our short list for Spring as well as Las Vegas…but, I hadn’t checked the airfare yet so I’m sure I’m in for major sticker shock (IF there’s even availability!). And that’s why we always wind up at the Jersey shore!

    1. Airfare isn’t cheap to Phoenix, but you can get a non-stop flight, which is nice. I think Vegas is notoriously a cheap(er) vacation, yes??? (I’m beginning to think there is no such thing as a cheap vacation.)

    1. Oh, so many! Do you know what area you want to go to? Bar Harbor and Mt. Desert Island is the most popular spot, probably. I’m most familiar with that region. Check out the Travel Section on my blog. I need to write up some more informative posts, most of mine are pretty personal, but it still might give you some ideas. https://jolynneshane.com/category/travel-2/maine

      I am realizing how many posts I could/should write about Maine… adding that to my To Do List. GAH! 🙂

  2. We took the kids to Vegas a couple of years ago. Being that we don’t gamble, it seemed like an odd place to go, but we had a total blast! You can get much more hotel for your money…took the kids to see Cirque du Soleil (“O” at the Bellagio–fantastic!!!) , toured the Hoover Dam, which was fascinating. There’s a lot to do in Vegas that is fine for families, and the highlight of the trip was we took a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. Landed in the bottom, had a picnic lunch, then flew back and got to fly over the Vegas strip at night. Not a cheap option but probably one of the coolest things we’ve ever done in our life! Kids still talk about it. Vegas is a foodie’s delight too…so many great places to eat, and wonderful pools to lounge by when walking gets old! If you goin the summer the hotel rates are better…just be prepared for the heat! Just tossing ideas out…have fun with whatever you do!

  3. Have fun vacation planning! Just watch that foot- the risk of blood clots increases with injury & I always worry when I hear someone describe a throbbing pain. I don’t mean to worry you, I am just throwing it out there as someone who has had clots due to injury.

    Also, thank you for making it so EASY to comment on your site via mobile. Goodness it is unbelievable how hard some blogs are when you are on your phone!

  4. When we went to the Grand Canyon, we flew to Vegas, then drove to the Grand Canyon. It wasn’t a bad drive and there are some neat things to see on the way. The Grand Canyon was beautiful, although it snowed during spring break when we were there. 🙂 80-90 in Vegas and snowing at the Grand Canyon!

  5. I would love to know how to reduce the airfare to Arizona! I really want my kids to get out to Phoenix/Tucson while my mom is still in good health. They’ve never seen the desert, and we moved out of Southern CA when they were babies. My husband grew up outside Phoenix, so it would fun to visit my mom, do the national parks, and let him show them around his old neighborhood. I just can’t figure out how–the airfare alone is $3000 for the five of us, then we’d need to rent a car (because we can’t all fit in my mom’s) plus rent a place to stay (she’s in a 1BR condo in a senior area). It comes out to more than TWICE what I normally budget for a week-long vacation, and I haven’t even gotten to the timing–pull kids out of school to go when it’s “nice” there?

  6. You know you would hear from me about your foot injury. I had terrible pain, way worse than the actual injury, with mine after being declared “healed”. Enough to go to the dr and have another set of x-rays. That was when my dr said, “I hate to tell you this but, you are old*. And you probably will have weather and pressure related pain, forever” People saying they feel the weather change in their bones, that is me now.

    Anyways, 18 months later, he is right. Any little irritation ends up hurting alot. I, generally, ice it. If it is really bad, ibuprofen but I hate taking meds so it has to be causing limping or waking me at night to go to that extreme. I would just give it a couple of days and baby it a little. If it is still bothering you then, go get it checked out.

    I don’t remember exactly where your fracture is. Mine is mid foot in the 5th metatarsal. When the pain flares, I switch to the least flexible shoes I can find. That helps alot too. I discovered that this summer and am on the hunt for stiff soled shoes.

    * apparently 40 is old in the medical world. Especially in the bone healing world

  7. The vacation planning sounds fun. We already have our Jersey Shore vacation booked for next year. The rest of the time will probably be spent on day trips looking at colleges. I cannot believe I am typing that! If anything, it will at least give me some topics for the blog!

  8. Cannot wait to see your new logo etc.

    Phoenix is great and fun if you have not spent a lot of time in the desert. For airfare try mesa airport. It is a bit more of a drive but airfare is so much cheaper and it is a small airport so easy to arrive and depart there. Also try not flying on the weekend days that can help. It is a great place and you drive everywhere in Phoenix anyways.

    Love staying at jw desert ridge. Great location, pool, rounds and food. It is across from a mall and tons of places to eat near there and lots of activities. Not too far from scotsdale which has some great places to hang out. Love to eat at the pita jungle. Casual place but if you love hummus you will like it. And I recommend the phoenix desert botanical garden. When I went there was a chiuly exhibit which was amazing. Very cool place for us non desert people. Tons of other things to do but this is a start. Good luck!

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