A few weeks ago, I was appreciating insights from Mali’s extremely
long trip to the UK, and I commented that I would write our travel tips. Her post and writing down my own made me realize that how we travel (what is important to us when we go somewhere) is so personal that what works for one person probably won’t work for another. But in case this helps anyone:

• We have a master packing list that we use for every trip. It has everything we need for a weekend at the beach or three weeks in France. When we’re going on a trip, I hit duplicate and delete things off the list that we don’t need, such as a passport at the beach. It’s a streamlined list, so I never overpack or forget anything. I used every piece of clothing on this trip, but I also fit all in a carry-on.
• Speaking of which, we pack all clothes and non-liquid toiletries in carry-on bags. Then we pack a duffle bag inside a suitcase and check it. Our plane tickets often come with one checked bag each. The checked bag has our meals (see below) and toiletries. During the trip, the large suitcase collects dirty laundry, and when we pop out the duffle bag at the last stop, it gives us an extra bag for things we bring back with us.
• No matter where we go, we bring breakfast, coffee, and lunch with us. Those meals don’t matter to us, and we save a ton of money and time that way. I have a scoop of peanut butter and VIA coffee in the room, and usually a kind bar for an early lunch. Then we get a snack and dinner out.
• We also sometimes do what the kids call grocery dinners. Instead of getting takeaway, we go to the grocery store and get veggies and yogurt and crackers or prepared foods. Can you tell that meals don’t really matter to us unless it’s a favourite restaurant?
• We record a family audio journal every night. We started doing this when the twins were eight (when I first got a recording device), and we only do it for longer trips (vs. a weekend at the beach). By talking through the day for 10 – 15 minutes every night, we capture all the details and everyone’s memories, and we go back and listen to them and remember things we’ve forgotten all the time. We weren’t great about getting everything down in a written journal, but the audio journal has been a low-lift with a big pay off.

What are your best travel tips?

25 years ago, I ate the best picnic on my friend’s living room floor of Linda McCartney sausages, toast, and tea. We can’t get them in the US. Whenever we’re in a country that carries them, we don’t have a kitchen to prepare them. So the most I’ve gotten to do for the past 25 years is go to grocery stores and stare at the box in the freezer section.

But Josh got us an aparthotel in York with a full kitchen. We headed out to the grocery store, purchased everything we’d need to remake the meal, and I fried up vegan sausages for the family.

They were just as good as I remembered 25 years ago. Even better because we were sitting at a table, and I wasn’t jet-lagged. Well worth the wait.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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You can take a photograph and remember how something looked. You can make a recording and remember how something sounded. But you can’t capture a scent.

The moment I stepped out of the Tube in South Kensington, I smelled the air, a permanent mixture of diesel, burnt sugar, and petrichor. It smells the same in every season, and I always forget how it smells days after we get back until I get to breathe it in again.

It’s not a good scent. It’s not baking bread or coffee or soap. But it’s this scent that anchors me to a place. And I wish there was a way to capture a smell like you do a photo or a recording and return to it when you’re far away.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

We were supposed to go to Spain for winter break this year, but we put off purchasing tickets during the flooding, and the day after the election, Josh commented that we needed a trip that felt like a hug. We had a family meeting that night and decided to switch plans and go to the UK.

We wanted to end up in London, staying in our favourite hotel and going to our favourite restaurant and doing our favourite things. But we also wanted to add in a few places we haven’t been before, so we dropped in Devon, Suffolk, Norfolk, Yorkshire, County Durham, and Oxfordshire; visiting a few towns in each county.

I loved spending time with the kids in a place we enjoyed and watching all of us relax for a few weeks. The ChickieNob walked us through the architecture of every cathedral and the history of each town. The Wolvog photographed each space so we could look back on it once we were home.

We ate cake pretty much every day, and one time, the Wolvog convinced us that it would be an excellent idea to eat a second round of scones. (Spoiler alert: It was not.) We saw two plays, had two sessions in rare book rooms, went back to Buckingham Palace for the East Wing tour (which took you into the room with the famous balcony), bought a lot of books, fell in love with two churches, walked on the beach in Southwold, and saw the earliest mermaid carving in England in Durham Castle (around 1078).

A story: Before we left Bury St. Edmunds, we returned to the abbey gardens to walk through one last time on the way back to the bus. A man sat on the ground by the front gate, surrounded by 30 – 40 pigeons. Some of the pigeons had lined up in front of him, and they took turns jumping into his lap where he would pick them up, cuddle them for a moment, nuzzle the top of their head with his cheek, and then open his hands to release them. They would fly a few feet away, and the next pigeon would hop into his lap for its cuddle. One, it was incredible to see the patience and organization on the part of the birds. Two, the moment filled me with hope for the world. There are people out there who spend their afternoon cuddling birds, and they are just as real as the people out there set to do damage. The key is remembering that.

The kids left a few days ago to return to school, and I still feel empty. Winter break is deceptive because it looks long on the calendar but moves so quickly that it feels over in a second. At least, it does to me.

It was lovely. It felt too quick. And now it is back to a quiet house and talking to Beorn and missing them.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Accepting a Childless Life Should Not Be a Crime” (Childless by Marriage)
• “Shifting Mindscape” (The Barreness)
• “Collective Waiting” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Barreness processes the California fires. She is the keeper of many family photos, and she writes: “To help me work through the constant onslaught of sadness, fear and grief from the fires and the election I started scanning all the images. I can share them with my cousins and niblings. That way I would not be the only one to hold them and there will be other locations to view them/save them.” The story about the book pages raining down on the yard was haunting.

Lastly, Finding a Different Path writes about an ultrasound picture that ended up in her work mailbox. She realized things would only change if she spoke up. She writes, “I explained that ultrasound pictures are triggering even though they are EVERYWHERE (facebook, emails, CHRISTMAS CARDS, profile pictures, ugh), and that we have a lot of people (the WORLD has a lot of people) that saw that and it opened up a wound.” Luckily, the conversation went okay, and the person took her words to heart. As she writes: “how will anyone ever know unless we talk about it?”

The roundup to the Roundup: Missing the kids. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between Jan 10 – 31) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.