This giveaway has ended. Thank you to everyone who entered! Angela Bishop is the winner. Her comment was chosen at random through random.org. Angela, I’ve emailed you instructions on how to claim your prize! I look forward to many more giveaways with y’all! Gratefully, Christy

Folks have started to notice lately that we tend to “go places a lot”. By going places, I’m not talking about big trips or anything, most of our trips are just day trips within an hour or two from our home. Most are also budget trips – I even pack lunches on many of them. I had a friend ask me a few weeks back “Why do y’all go places all the time?”. Well, there is a good answer to that.

You see, with me working from home and my husband having his entire office with him within his laptop, we noticed a while back that when we’re home on the weekends, even though we’re all here together, we are not spending quality time together as a family. Work that needs to be done (both Southern Plate, Ricky’s Job, and household chores) stares back at us wherever we turn. The kids end up in their rooms watching television or vegging out somewhere and we can easily spend an entire weekend in the house together and not really spend any time together.

So we started “Family Adventure Days” back in September of last year and I’ve posted about a few of them. I have lots of ideas for inexpensive day trips that I plan on bringing you in the future but I try not to stray too far from recipes for too long so I spread Family Adventure Day posts out a bit. It’s a great deal of fun for us to get in the car, sing silly songs, talk, and just have fun doing something together. My hope when we started this was to grow a stronger family and help us stay connected and I have to say that since Family Adventure Days have begun they have proven to be the absolute best thing that ever happened to us.

We just got back from this weekend’s adventure and I thought I’d bring you some photos from it along with my giveaway. I’m really excited about this giveaway package so y’all be sure to enter!

The Burritt Museum is located in my hometown of Huntsville, Alabama but surprisingly, I’d never been until today. I think a lot of us are like that with our hometowns, you live among something all of your life and you tend to kind of overlook it.

One of the biggest attractions in Huntsville is the U.S. Space Museum and as a child growing up here we seemed to go there on just about every school field trip and every summer because my family couldn’t afford to travel. Having never really had that much of an interest in space travel myself (I’m good just discovering Alabama most days), I went mainly to see the monkeys. Well, the monkeys passed away and that left a bunch of space suits, shuttles and artifacts and such. Honestly y’all, I’ve probably been at least thirty times in my life. Well Glory be, I went and married someone whose fondest hope as a child had been to see the U.S. Space Museum.

We’ve been annual passholders since Brady was born. Lawd help me.

How did a post about the Burritt Museum turn to space travel? I have no idea, but completely random tangents are part of my charm, doncha think?

~grins~

So back to discovering great attractions in your hometown…

The thing is, there are lots of things around you that you may not have seen or that you may not realize are new to your kids. I really enjoyed getting to discover the Burritt with my kids and they are proud to have it right here where we live, but you know the cool thing about this Family Adventure? It was free! Today the Burritt hosted a free admission day. Can’t beat that with a stick!

We were all pretty darn happy. To make matters even more cool, they had Sacred Harp singers there as well.

I was so excited to have my kids experience this kind of singing. Nothing is more moving. Here is a short video for y’all.

I know they likely have this music everywhere but I feel it is also a strong part of the kid’s heritage and I really enjoyed introducing them to that today.

I thought this was a cute picture.

It’s fun to get out and interact with the world with your kids.

You get to know them so much better and have so many more opportunities to teach them about the fun little quirks of life….

Like how some people might decide to hang a giant moose head right in the middle of their kitchen wall.

~blinks~

Y’all know I have an obituary hanging in my kitchen but I think I may have been outdone here…

Hey I just had an idea. What if we got like a pig’s head, cow’s head, and then a stuffed chicken and hang them all up. Then we could have like a visual menu of whats for dinner? Yeah, I’m groping here. Just still trying to figure out the giant moose head (is that even a moose?). I’ll bet ya ninety to nothin’ it all started with some woman putting her hands on her hips and saying “If you’re planning on hanging that thing in my house…”

I just thought this was a pretty scene and got the kids to agree to pose so we had to strike while the iron was hot.

Getting two kids to pose for a photo is not always easy. of course, then again neither is getting one kid to pose-as Brady is about to show us.

Me and young Indiana…

He and I are going rounds about the hat in this photo…

~sighs~ I just love him. Still my baby.

The kids exploring one of the many cabins on the property. This one had several hand made rag dolls inside and in their own little bed. The cabin had a plaque outside of it requesting that you hug the rag dolls and then tuck them in nice and warm. 🙂

Ricky looking out.

Some of my commentary lacks poetry at times and I apologize for this. Let me see if I can do better here.

Ricky gazed out into the fields and felt a stirring deep within. They had tread here, his ancestors-the men from which he descended. His mother’s people had once toiled upon this very soil where he now stood in his overpriced Nikes. His eyes narrowed, as if pressing the shutter button on his mind’s eye to memorize the scene and take it with him. Thanks to those who came before him, he could now walk away.

Dang, old gal can get dramatic, huh? I’m full of it and I can assure you my husband is the last person who’d look at a log cabin and feel any sort of a kinship to it.

That would be me 🙂

Something about these cabins just stirs my soul like they’re calling me to them.

This feels like home to me.

I just need electricity and wireless internet 🙂

The kids were hungry so I reckon they made a wish for some good Southern food and VOILA!

Next thing you know we were at the Blue Plate Cafe!

Oddly, I’d never been here before, either.

It’s neat when you’ve lived somewhere all of your life but can take a day and still discover new places.

The whole family loved the atmosphere and food.

It was very clean and had the feel of a fifties diner.

Christy, What’dya eat? I know y’all were wondering and if you weren’t I’m still gonna tell ya anyway!

I ordered boiled cabbage, Cucumber, onion, and tomato salad (which is the same thing as my Fire and Ice Salad, only more diced up), chicken and dressing, and a wee bit of cranberry sauce on the side. It was delicious.

We had another great family fun day and I hope you get to have one with your family soon! Remember, you don’t have to leave your hometown or even your home, you just have to set aside a special time to tune into each other.

An investment of time into your family will give you the greatest return you could ever hope for.

NOW FOR MY GIVEAWAY!

Thanks to the wonderful Nestle Family, one of our Southern Plate Families is going to win a FANTASTIC Family Night In in honor of Mother’s Day! I figured up how much all of this was worth and it ended up being over $150!

This prize package includes:

$25 Gift Card to Amazon.com

Use it to buy one or two of your favorite movies- Family movie night is a great way to snuggle up with the kidders on the couch, watch a great movie, save a ton of money, and have a lot more fun than you could in theaters!

Coupons for FREE products from:

• Stouffer’s
• Nesquick
• Ovaltine
• Nestle Toll House
• Coffee Mate
• Juicy Juice
• Rainsette
• 30 day kit of Glowelle, a nutrition drink for your skin (valued at over $100 alone!)
• You’ll even get a coupon you can put towards new Wonka Exceptionals.

So basically, they’re providing your supper, snacks, and drinks, too! The whole family gets to be treated!

To enter this giveaway, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post and I’ll draw a winner at random to announce next Saturday.

Would you like to enter my Family Night In giveaway from Nestle?

Simply leave a comment below to be entered!

I’ll announce the winner next Saturday, just in time for mother’s day. The winner will be posted here, on my facebook page, and emailed out to Southern Plate Subscribers!

Disclaimer: I was not financially compensated by Nestle for this post. They were kind enough to offer the prize package as a giveaway to one of my readers though. My positive opinion was not required, asked for, and is not for sale. Thank you, Nestle, for being such a great company to work with!