Search Results for Ca (368)

Waking up from the American Dream

Ashley Longnecker / March 03, 2015

Are you excited?

This is a question I have been asked over and over for the last 5 months since we made our traveling plans known. 

These last 5 months have flown by. There has been so much organizing, selling, painting, preparing and planning going on that I sometimes just stop and have to remember to breathe. Every now and then I’ll find myself trying to think about what it will be like when we are actually out of the house and living everyday in our 5th wheel. But it’s hard. I’ve never slept in a 5th wheel let alone stayed in one, ever. This is a whole new experience for our family. We’ve never pulled a 42 foot trailer behind a truck. We’ve never tried to cram 6 people’s belongings into a 420 sqft space. 

Good iPad Games for Your Kids: Part 1

Jonathan Longnecker / February 10, 2015

Hey, you know what's fun? Grabbing one of those crappy free games on the App Store and letting your kids try to play it. It's jam packed full of annoying ads, game play mechanics that require in app purchases and so many popups there's no way you could possibly enjoy playing it, let alone your kids (who keep accidentally tapping the wrong thing and ending up in a web browser with some ad or in the App Store trying to get them to buy another app).

I lied. This is not fun. This isn't how games are supposed to be. 

I remember throwing a cartridge into my Nintento or Sega Genesis (yeah I'm old) and just losing myself in the graphics, music, story and game play. You know, back when games were fun? 

Recently I've become determined to make sure my kids know what a good game is. The first step was to grab this awesome Sega Gensis with 80 games built in! That's right, you can play Streets of Rage, Sonic the Hedgehog or Vectorman all from this one console. It's pretty cool!

The second step was to find fun, high quality games for our iPad without in-app purchases. Also said games may not involve endlessly running or flinging animals from a slingshot over and over again.

In the words of Barney Stinson, "Challenge accepted!" Here's a few of the best games we've played over the last year or so. They're not free or cheap, but they're great games you can play with your kids on the iPad. Great graphics, engaging story, thought-provoking puzzles and blistering action. We hope you love them as much as we do.

Leo's Fortune

Code:Rad - Revoltech Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Jonathan Longnecker / January 31, 2015

In case you missed it, we're big Ninja Turtle fans in the Longnecker household. I grew up with them, and now my kids are obsessed. We've watched just about every movie and television season we can get our hands on. And of course we've got all the toys. I'm pretty sure we have every action figure you can get. Or at least we thought we did.

Recently I ran across these bad boys from a Japanese company called Revoltech (seriously, it's all in Japanese). Not only are the a near perfect sculpt of the turtles from the 2012 Nickelodeon series, but they are dang near infinitely poseable and come with amazing detailed weapons. Shoot, you can even pose their eyes or white them out for battle mode. Rad!

I showed them to the kids, explaining that getting something like this wouldn't really be a toy you would play with all the time since they're delicate. But they still wanted them.

So we surprised them for Christmas this year and got the whole set. Or maybe I bought them for myself. Anyway.

Longnecker Year in Review: 2014

Jonathan Longnecker / January 13, 2015

While I'm not usually one to jump on bandwagon's, a year-in-review is never a bad idea. It's good to take a breath, look back and gain some perspective on how you spent your time over the last 365 days. Plus, writing it all down means you can actually come back, read it again and learn from it!

So much happened in 2014, but the biggest news was that we finally decided to take the plunge and start the process of traveling full time! We're not on the road yet, but we're committed, have a plan and should be on our way in 2015. More on that later!

Here a few highlights of the Longnecker's 2014:

Money

This was the year we finally got out of debt! We paid off one of our cars late 2013 and the other in early 2014. What tremendous weight off our shoulders! 

All that's left is the house, and we'll be tackling that when we start our full-time travels.

This was also the first year we were really able to start saving and building an emergency fund bigger than the minimum of $1,000.  While we were never super stressed about money, having a healthy savings account definitely helps us breath easier. Highly recommended.

Health

2014 was also the first year that I believe Ashley and I finally began to understand what we needed to do to be healthy. We were both tipping the scales at our highest weights ever (pregnancies not included!) and everything we started just wouldn't stick.

A conversation with our chiropractor flipped a switch for me, though. It was simple math - I was consistently eating too many calories for my body to burn off. The extras got stored as fat. I was making this decision over and over again, day after day without even realizing it. 

Code:Rad - Smartwool Socks

Ashley Longnecker / January 12, 2015

I had never owned any wool socks before my last trip to Indiana when my sister insisted that I buy these Smartwool socks.

She promised me that I would never go back to cotton socks. She promised me my feet would stay warm but not sweat, and she promised me that they would be worth the $15 per pair that I was about to pay. She promised me that I wouldn’t have to wash them more than once a week because they are wool and don’t harbor bacteria and she promised me that they wouldn’t stink.

Well, Lee Ann - you were so freaking right. I will never go back to cotton socks. I am in love. My feet are warm, but never sweat. They don’t smell and I can wear my one pair of socks for a whole week without washing them! SOLD! I now have 2 pairs of Smartwool socks and as soon as I got back to Tennessee I bought a pair for Jonathan to try out. He’s just about as picky about his clothing as I am. Guess what! He LOVES them. In fact, I haven’t seen him wear his old cotton stretched out socks one time since I bought him the Smartwool socks. SCORE!

How awesome would it be to only have 2 pairs of socks per person in your house?

Have I ever showed you our bag of unmatched socks? Holy crap. It makes me mad every time I look at that bag. This will solve all our problems. Everyone is in charge of their 2 socks! I just need to get them each 2 pairs and we’ll be good to go.

Give them a try - or pick some up at REI. They are worth every penny.