Family Finance: Why Amazon Prime?

Image 19 Comments January 29, 2018 Sammy and Sufi

Hello friends. It’s me again, here with your second dose of family finance for the new year. In the first post, I covered the very basics of budgeting and how to go about calculating a realistic budget based on your expenses. In the next few posts, I will be discussing how we save money shopping by using subscription services like Amazon Prime and Costco’s Executive Membership. Today’s post will be specifically about Amazon Prime, a service that we have used for years and are well acquainted with. I am aware that there are pros and cons to each service that we recommend and I will try my best to address these today and in the upcoming posts.

What is Amazon Prime in a nutshell?
Amazon Prime is an online shopping subscription service for $99/year that gives you access to 2-day delivery guarantee on Prime items. On top of the free 2-day delivery (nothing is free, I am sure the accountants have it all calculated in your prime pricing) it also gives you access to Amazon Photo, Amazon Video, Twitch and other Amazon owned subsidiary services. What Amazon does is that it spares you (both time and money) from having to hop in your car and drive to a number of different stores to purchase the goods that you need; everything from clothing to food to office supplies to home tools and appliances. You name it and it’s most likely on Amazon.

Although we don’t have Amazon Fresh where we live in Michigan, I am hopeful that with their acquisition of Whole Foods it will soon become a reality. Amazon Fresh is a service that has a contractor buy groceries per your request and deliver it straight to your door in a matter of hours. Yes, we are moving towards the future we saw in WALL-E (if you haven’t seen WALL-E, do me a favor and watch it. It’s one of Pixar’s masterpieces). My wife is adamant that even with Amazon Fresh she will still prefer going to the local grocer or farmer’s market, I guess we will just have to see about that. Until we get Amazon Fresh, we are currently making the most of the Subscribe & Save feature of our membership.

Subscribe & Save
As homeowners and parents, we take advantage of Amazon’s Subscribe and Save feature to receive items that we use regularly at home on a monthly basis at a discounted rate. The way it works is that there are items on Amazon you can subscribe to (these could be anything from cleaning products to personal care products to snacks). If you subscribe to less than 5 items you get 5% off the price of those items at checkout and if you subscribe to 5 or more items, you get 15-20% off those items.

Although you only get one subscription box a month, you have the option of changing the delivery date and the contents of your box to fit your needs. On top of the discounts received, you can get an additional 5% off in the form of Amazon points to use towards future purchases if you pay with an Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card. Below is an example of what our Subscribe & Save looks like. Notice how on the left there are 5 bars highlighted in orange. This means that since we have 5 or more items in our subscription box, we are eligible for the extra 15-20% off.

Sample list:
Tom’s of Maine Toothpaste
Mrs. Meyers Hand Soap
ECOS Natural Dishwashing Liquid
Peter Rabbit Organics Puree
Larabar Fruit and Nut Bar

Amazon Prime Video
We don’t have cable because we don’t watch TV that often and we also HATE commercials with a passion. Amazon Video is a wonderful feature of our Amazon Prime membership (think like Netflix) with an extensive library that includes plenty of educational and family-friendly content for our Friday movie nights. If you decide on a Prime membership, Prime Video is automatically included but you can also sign up for Prime Video as a standalone service.

Amazon Prime Pantry
The introduction of Prime Pantry allowed Amazon to expand its selection and offer thousands of items to Prime members that are cost prohibitive to ship for free individually. Since the items are smaller, individually shipping them isn’t an option, but if you fill a box worth of all your needs you can save substantially and also get Prime Pantry credit to use towards future Prime Pantry purchases. We don’t currently use this feature as we do most of our shopping at local grocery stores and Costco but it’s definitely something we are exploring because the pricing is competitive, it’s a real time saver once set up, and we can save an extra 5% by using our Amazon Prime Rewards credit card.

Now you have an idea of what Amazon Prime is and how it works but the real question is: is it really worth it? What I have discussed up until this point, is just the surface of Amazon’s services. I haven’t even mentioned perks like your choice of a free kindle book every month or access to ad-free listening via Amazon Music or unlimited media storage through Amazon Photo. If I truly wanted to dissect each feature, this would turn into a VERY lengthy post so for the purposes of sticking to the topic, I will next address how a Prime membership can be an asset to managing your family’s finances and keeping to a budget.

Amazon Prime Memberships
In terms of types of Amazon Prime memberships, there are three different options: 1) Standard, 2) Family, and 3) Student. Below I’ve listed the three memberships along with links to their 30-day Free Trial if you’re interested in giving them a try. We currently have a standard membership but we suggest that if you’re a parent and you don’t cloth diaper that you sign up with Amazon Family as they offer discounts on many baby-related products including up to 20% off on disposable diapers.

Standard: Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial
Family: Try Amazon Family 30-Day Free Trial
Student: Try Amazon Prime 50% Off For Students

If you want to experience Amazon before diving into a membership or free trial and you’re either getting married or having a baby, I highly recommend you do your gift registry through Amazon. You get all the benefits of their customer service, everything delivered to your home, and on top of it you get a coupon to purchase any remaining items off your list. If you have your baby registry with Amazon and you are a Prime member, however, you get additional perks including a $35 welcome box.

Why Amazon?
Okay, so Amazon Prime is awesome. It saves you money by saving you time with its 2-day shipping, competitive pricing, and diverse selection of products. But you’re probably asking how does this translate in terms of numbers? To illustrate how the membership pays for itself, I’m going to share a few ways we save big using Amazon Prime.

Gifts.
Between holidays, birthdays, and just because, we do most of our gift shopping via Amazon Prime. I’m talking 50 gifts a year, at least (yeah, we are blessed with family and friends). If we were to pay 2-day shipping for even just 10 of those gifts, we would easily spend the $100 that our membership costs. Assuming shipping is around $10 (depending on box size and location this can vary from $7-$20+) on average (I just sent a small box to a city 30 minutes away and it was $8 for standard shipping), we save at least $400 a year not paying for shipping when we gift.

School books.
If you’re a student like us, you know that the cost of books can add up FAST. Not only are Amazon’s book prices consistently low compared to other retailers but on shipping alone, we definitely save big with a Prime membership. Since we first started using Amazon we’ve had over 100 book orders, and while it would take entirely too much time to calculate how much we saved going with Amazon as opposed to our university’s Barnes and Nobles, we definitely saved at least $500 on just shipping alone. On top of that we were able to sell our books back via Amazon Marketplace for much more than we would have received from our university bookstore. The bottom line is if you’re a student then you should seriously consider getting Amazon Prime (the membership is only $50/year for students).

Household.
From dishwasher detergent to a router, we have saved a great deal over the years going with Amazon for our household needs. We have purchased a rug for the nursery, a projector for our home theater system, and even our bikes from Amazon. For all of these items we were able to do extensive comparisons of pricing, customer reviews, and warranties to ensure that we were getting the most bang for our buck. Just to give you an idea, one of the rugs we ordered was $100 more at places like Walmart and Home Depot and the projector we purchased was $200 more at Best Buy.

Baby.
Amazon has a diverse selection of products that we would not have had access to if we went to our local baby stores, especially with our choice to cloth diaper. We were able to get a variety of quality cloth diapers for a fraction of the cost ($26 for 6 as opposed to $15-20 each) as well as significant discounts on products such as strollers, baby proofing essentials and bilingual toys and books.

Is Amazon Prime guaranteed to save you money and lower your bills? Not necessarily but it certainly can if you play your cards right. I like to think of Amazon as a tool or technology that can be used either for good or bad. Amazon Prime often gets a bad rap as an enabler of mismanagement because of its effortless accessibility and it’s not hard to see why. I do think, however, that if you have a busy lifestyle and if you spend regularly on some of the things I listed then you can definitely use Amazon Prime to your advantage when budgeting and saving money. If you took the steps I suggested in the first post to create a budget, the best way to know if Amazon is right for you is to do some research on your expenses and determine whether you can cut costs with a Prime membership. In the next post we will introduce the other players that compete with Amazon and why we use a combination of services instead of solely using Amazon Prime.

If you found this post helpful, we would appreciate it if you like and share it. If you are an Amazon Prime member and have something to add to the conversation or you’re considering Prime and have more specific questions about their services and pricing, feel free to comment/ask below. We always love hearing from our readers 🙂 And as always…

Family Finance: A Simple Budget Overview

Image 3 Comments December 18, 2017 Sammy and Sufi

Hello friends! Today’s post is going be different than the usual and it might even seem a little off topic because it’s about numbers (my favorite subject). As a financial analyst, budgeting is a subject near and dear to my heart and something I have been wanting to write about for a while now. While it doesn’t fit the usual cozy home posts of DIY projects and healthy recipes, it is something that is essential to the kind of lifestyle we write about. Sound budgeting not only reduces stress but it is absolutely necessary for eating healthy, saving for the future, and investing in quality experiences (just to name a few).

Although life is busy with two kids and endless responsibilities, I try to make sure that my wife and I are on the same page when it comes to our finances. While talking about money sometimes gets a bad rap in certain cultures (it can be taken for stinginess or greed) the reality is that money is an important aspect of life that, when managed properly, can be a real source of strength for your family. With the New Year just around the corner, I wanted to write a series of posts that would be helpful for those looking to review and improve their financial stability by acquainting them with some basic concepts, tools, and resources to budget better, save more, and stress less. In this first post, I will discuss a simple approach to budgeting that will involve choosing a methodology for budgeting and tracking that is comfortable and realistic for you and your lifestyle. Let’s get started!

Agenda

Choose a methodology for budgeting that is realistic
Find and maximize your budgeting strategy to free up time for other activities
Help you commit to a new financial awareness

1. Cash vs. Credit: Choose a spending system
There are many blogs and websites out there that tout the merits of using cash-only while vilifying credit cards as enablers of mismanagement. While there is some truth to this, there are many benefits to using credit cards especially when used alongside online budgeting platforms. I am a firm believer of using a hybrid system and as of right now we have an 80/20 split between credit and cash respectively. Choosing a system is important because it will dictate how you track your numbers. For example, if you decide to use mostly credit like we do, along with an online budgeting platform, much of the work in terms of tracking numbers will be done for you automatically. Another benefit of using credit is being able to take advantage of cash-back or point bonus systems that many well-known credit card companies offer. While your budget will dictate to some extent what your spending system will look like, it’s important to envision how you’re comfortable spending so you can get into a rhythm that works for your lifestyle and fits into tracking and accountability.

2. Written vs. Digital: Tracking your numbers
Aside from choosing a spending system, it’s also important to pick your preference when it comes to keeping track of your income and expenses. There are many budgeting apps and free online software’s such as Mint, YNAB, Google Sheets, and Microsoft Excel to name a few. I use Excel because I always have but if I didn’t have access to it then Google Sheets would be a more than capable replacement. If you can’t see yourself committing to updating a sheet every day or two on the computer then stick to good old pen and paper (you can find PDF expense trackers here). If you’re not into tracking at all then you might want to really consider an online system like MINT or YNAB. All you need to sign up is a valid e-mail address and the rest is simply adding your financial account information. Mint is a free platform while YNAB is free for some people such as college students (more on their pricing structure here). The most important thing is that you choose a medium that is comfortable for you so that you can be consistent and disciplined.

Now that you have an idea of what kind of spending system you’d like and how you want to keep track of your numbers, let’s do a very basic run through of how to calculate a budget.

3. Fixed vs. Variable Expenses: Determining your Budget

Fixed expenses: A fixed expense is one that you can’t change and tends to stay around the same dollar amount every month. Mortgage payments, apartment rent, and car lease payments are all examples of fixed expenses.

Variable expenses: A variable expense is something that changes from month to month based on different factors. Groceries, clothing, entertainment, and gifts would be examples of variable expenses because you decide how much to spend to some degree.

To determine your monthly budget, you will need to calculate your expenses (fixed + variable) and subtract them from your monthly income. I have provided a sample Excel sheet template below for downloading to show you how this is done. As you can see, there are three sections: income, fixed expenses, and variable expenses. If you want to follow along using the custom budget template that I created, go ahead and start by inputting your income first followed by your expenses. In this example, the income is $3500/month, total expenses are $2402, and there is a positive balance of $1098.

You can adjust the expense categories to more accurately reflect your family’s lifestyle but I tried to include a diverse list of expenses to give you an idea of what to account for. If you’re totally clueless on what you’re spending on or even how much you spend on basic things like groceries, I suggest you try a 30-day trial period where you diligently track each and every expense. This will help acquaint you with your spending habits and allow you to identify practices that are not budget-friendly. For example, if your grocery expense is much higher than you’re comfortable with and you’d really like to be saving for say a post-graduation trip then you might want to adopt practices like meal planning and meal prepping to work alongside your budgeting approach. While you do want to be as accurate as possible when accounting for your spending, you don’t want to be too extreme to the point that you’re tracking every penny unless you are in a very tight situation. Once you’ve figured out you’re spending habits, created a budget, and have begun tracking your monthly expenses you are now able to do the fun part of analyzing your data and working towards saving and investing.

Now with the basics down, it will be much easier for me to share some of my tips and tricks for saving monthly, planning trips, and investing in the future. I have a few posts planned out for this series already; one to cover college savings funds and another to cover the advantages of memberships like Amazon Prime and Costco. As I said early on in this post, finance is a subject that I am very passionate about so if there’s something you’d like to see covered in this series then please don’t hesitate to contact us either through email or by leaving a message in the comments below. We hope this post was the spark you needed to rethink your budget and saving strategies for 2018. As always, if you liked this post please follow us and share!

Salted Maple Vanilla Caramel Sauce & Snack Board

Image 8 Comments December 15, 2017 Sammy and Sufi

This is a sponsored post written by us on behalf of DairyPure. All opinions are 100% our own.

Cozy. It’s a simple, four-letter word that evokes plenty of warm fuzzy feelings. It’s also at the heart of our blog. Coziness, for us, is less about having a particular sense of style and more about cultivating specific practices that are meaningful and beautiful to you. One practice we find universally cozy (and we are sure you’ll agree) is the ability to create joyful memories with loved ones.

Everyone knows that food brings people together and while this is true, it doesn’t mean you have to prepare a three-course dinner to have a successful family gathering. A simple snack will more than suffice and that’s exactly what we have for you today. A delicious, naturally sweetened caramel dip that pairs well with your choice of wholesome snacks like apple slices, pretzels, and rice cakes. The best part about this caramel dip, is that it’s easy to make in a pinch. With just 5 ingredients and in under 20 minutes, you will have a decadent dip that would satisfy any sweet & salty tooth. And not just any ingredients. This dip is made with ingredients you can feel good about feeding your family; from the DairyPure cream, backed by its 5-point purity promise and sourced from local dairy farms to the 100% pure Maple syrup. Considering store-bought caramel dips are filled with artificial flavors and colors, these ingredients might even make you feel less guilty about eating the caramel straight from the jar (guilty as charged). With the holidays around the corner, we could all do with a little more relaxing and a little less stressing. Whether it’s your next family game night or your annual ugly sweater Christmas party, this snack board featuring our salted maple vanilla caramel sauce is sure to help you do just that!

Salted Maple Vanilla Caramel Sauce

Time: 20 mins
Difficulty: Easy
Print

Ingredients
1/3 cup DairyPure Half & Half or Heavy Cream
4 tablespoons unsalted quality butter
1 cup 100% pure Maple Syrup
1 teaspoon natural Vanilla extract
Pinch of Salt (I use Himalayan pink)

Note: If you want the sauce richer and creamier, you can substitute the DairyPure Half & Half for DairyPure Heavy Cream instead.

For serving:
Apple slices
Pretzels
Rice cakes
Waffle crisps
Shortbread cookies

Directions:
1. In a deep saucepan, bring the maple syrup to a boil then turn on low and let simmer for 10-15 minutes until the syrup has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon.
2. Add in the butter, vanilla, and salt and stir until the butter has melted.
3. Now pour in the half and half, stir for a minute or two and pour into a bowl or jar for serving. The sauce will solidify more as it cools so don’t be alarmed if it’s loose. If you want it thicker you can always let it simmer for a little bit longer.
4. For a fun presentation, arrange a cutting board with snacks for dipping around a bowl of caramel sauce.

What are your favorite family-time snacks? Let us know in the comments below and if you make this recipe or any other DairyPure simple recipes be sure to share and tag us on Instagram @thecozyhomechronicles and use the hashtag #SIMPLYMADEMEMORIES for a chance to be featured in our stories. Be sure to check here for special holiday coupons before you make that shopping trip!

As always if you liked this post, please follow us and share!

Organizing for Your Lifestyle: Strategies for Developing Sustainable Organizing Solutions

Image 8 Comments November 30, 2017 Sammy and Sufi

Let’s be real. Maintaining a clean house most days is a challenge in itself. Now add two young children and school and we are looking at nearly impossible. But we manage somehow. Believe it or not, the hardest part is not having to pick up after our little ones but rather picking up in a timely manner. In order to do that, one needs to be…dun..dun..dun.. yep, you guessed it. ORGANIZED! Since both my husband and I are in school this semester, we figured it was high time we got our house sustainably organized once and for all. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to get a little bit of help.

In her book Organizing for your Lifestyle, Jane Stoller offers inspiration and practical advice for tackling any organization project from the smallest closet to the biggest room. The first chapter is a general overview of organization philosophy covering the very basics including the health and cost benefits of organizing as well as organization approaches such as minimalism. After that expect to dive straight in. My favorite part of the book is the way in which it is organized; each chapter serves as a guide to a different space. As someone who suffers from indecisivism (is that a thing?) I can tell you that knowing where to start is the most stressful part so following a list definitely helped eliminate that stress. Here’s how the book is split up:

Closet
Bathroom
Kitchen
Travel
Books
Storage Room

Suddenly, a good pre-New Year’s purging doesn’t sound too bad now does it?! Today I’m sharing five of my favorite practical tips from the book and how I’m applying them as we tackle our organizational woes.

1. Have a date with your closet every year. Jane recommends evaluating and reorganizing your closet twice annually as “this will help you to stay fully in control of what you have, and knowledgeable about what you need, while ensuring that no excess clothing outstays its welcome.” We recently tackled the kid’s closet and ended up donating a TON of stuff they had outgrown that was taking up valuable space. After seeing how much space this opened up, I added reminders to my calendar to do this on a quarterly basis.

2. Think in terms of frequency of use. Mentally sorting out your belongings into daily use/weekly use/sparse use really puts things into perspective and allows you to tailor your organization system to your practical needs so that you have what you need when you need it. This has been really helpful in our bathroom as I have tried to make sure that we have easy access to the things we use every day like toothpaste and shampoo whereas medications that are used infrequently are tucked away out of sight.

3. “Organize so your mother (or father) can cook in your kitchen.” This one really stood out to me because the kitchen is the heart of our home. If you don’t have easy access to basic tools and ingredients while cooking then you’re wasting valuable time during meal prep. Imagining someone else using your kitchen is a great exercise for thinking about the efficiency of your space. I used the opportunity to remove some unwanted gadgets, dinnerware, and Tupperware out of circulation to make room for things that I actually use and need.

4. Find a balance between function and aesthetics. What works for one person or family doesn’t work for everyone and that’s okay. It’s up to you to find a solution that is both functional and visually appealing for your needs (sometimes function will trump aesthetics and that’s also okay). This issue came up for me while I sifted through my scarf collection. Although I can see how the variety of colors and patterns hanging together on a wall can be visually unappealing, this strategy has proven to be the most practical for my lifestyle because it offers easy open access to all my scarves.

5. Make organizing a lifestyle. This is by far the most important advice because it requires you to think in the long term. With this philosophy, organizing is no longer about buying storage containers or fancy systems but rather about asking yourself, “how can I stay organized?” The answer, I think, will lie in a happy medium between a designated system, daily practices, monthly maintenance, and a quarterly assessment of successes and failures. To help us along through this process, I’ve created a diagram to envision what this would look like.

We are by no means completely organized because we haven’t had the time to tackle all of these spaces in one sitting but we have been thinking through these tips as we slowly organize our home corner by corner. These strategies have certainly helped me be more intentional about finding sustainable organization solutions and I look forward to sharing more as we work on making our home better organized. If you want more organizing inspiration as well as tips and tricks on the specifics of storage, folding, and labeling, you can find Jane’s book here.

If you enjoyed this read, please share and follow!

Adventures in Hocking Hills

Image 13 Comments December 15, 2016 Sammy and Sufi

If you live in the Midwest and you’re looking for a picturesque place to vacation, hike, or unwind then we have the perfect place for you. There is a hidden gem located in Ohio, called Hocking Hills State Park, and it is only a 4-5 hour drive from many bordering states. We know what you’re thinking. Ohio?! What can possibly be in Ohio besides cornfields and farmhouses?! Well, this.

Yes, this exists in Ohio. And with a little bit of planning ahead you can refresh your soul and enjoy a relaxing getaway with a gorgeous view. There are plenty of activities for children and adults alike including hiking, fishing, canoeing, swimming, horseback riding and just all around enjoying nature. We have been visiting Hocking Hills since 2012 and have experienced its beauty both in the summer and winter. After our latest trip this past August, we decided to share a little bit about one of our favorite vacation spots for no other reason than we find it awesome and think you should visit. Our first adventure post…here goes!

Lodging
Where you lodge makes all the difference when you stay in Hocking Hills country. While there are hotels and motels you can stay in, we feel that the experience simply isn’t the same if you don’t stay in a log cabin. Rustic and cozy, these secluded cabins truly feel like a home away from home. There are so many different ones to choose from based on family size and amenities (like if you want a jacuzzi on your porch) but our personal favorite that we always come back to is Cabins by the Caves. Some cabins that you may come across online look dingy, tacky, and outdated but these ones are from it. The interiors have always been clean and inviting and the woods surrounding them are just serene. They are also very reasonably priced considering you’re getting a whole home to yourself. And if you go with a group and choose to share a cabin with friends or family, you’ll save even more. Just know that these cabins get booked far in advance (especially weekends and holidays) so if you’re thinking about a trip in the summer then consider booking soon.

Food
If you do choose to rent a cabin then there’s likely a full kitchen inside and this is where that extra bit of planning comes into play. It’s amazing how a simple meal plan, grocery shopping, and a cooler can really enhance your experience. Who wants to stress about what to eat when you’re on vacation? Most of these kitchens come equipped with everything you’ll need to cook (some even have outdoor grills like ours) so just do a bit of prep work before you leave and make life easier for yourself. I made a meal plan a few days before we left and did the shopping and chopping the day before. My advice is to pick easy meals that are healthy and not too involved. You don’t want to be cooking a five-course dinner on vacation either. If your cabin comes with a grill then plan your meals around that. Burgers, steaks, portobello mushrooms, peppers, etc… You name it, you can throw it on the grill.

To give you an idea, I made pizza dough the day before we left so that when it came time for dinner one of the nights, all I had to do was roll out the dough and top the pizzas before popping them in the oven. I also packed a gallon-sized ziplock bag with diced carrots, celery, and onions and added tuna, mustard, and mayo for a quick lunch of tuna salad sandwiches after one of our hikes. In the evenings when we had a sweet tooth, I would spoon homemade cookie dough that I made before we left and we’d have fresh, homemade chocolate chip cookies with cold milk. Having the meals decided and mostly prepped ahead of time really made the trip much less stressful.

Activities
We aren’t going to list every single activity there is to do because you can find all of them here but we will share some of the things we did and enjoyed along with some tips and tricks we learned for next time. One of the highlights of our trip was renting a pontoon from the Lake Logan Marina to ride around the lake for a few hours. While we thoroughly enjoyed the warm summer breeze and the scenery, it was a bit unnerving having babies on board. Our suggestion is that if you have young children to pack some toys to preoccupy them as they get restless pretty quickly. Also we hadn’t planned on boating until we drove by the small marina and so by the time we were out on the lake we realized it was lunchtime and we were starving. Next time we would plan for a picnic on the water because it would make for a memorable and fun experience. And why not?

Our little hobbit soaking in some sun and mist.

Out of all the activities we definitely hiked the most (you can’t really zip-line or ride horses with babies). We don’t know how we would have done it without a baby carrier for our 14-month old because only one of the caves had a semi-paved trail for handicap access. Also some of the hiking trails (The Rock House & Cantwell Cliffs) are more treacherous than others so we did not include them in our plans for safety reasons. We recommend you skip them too if you have babies with you. You can also plan on your daily schedule looking a bit different (surprise surprise) if you’re traveling with little ones. When we used to go before we had children, we would just hike carefree for hours. This trip we had to divide the trails over a couple of days to accommodate nap time and baby attention spans. Because of that our days ended up looking something like this:

Afternoon Day 1: Ash Cave
Morning Day 2: Old Man’s Cave
Afternoon Day 2: Swimming at Lake Logan
Morning Day 3: Cedar Falls
Afternoon Day 3: Boat ride on Lake Logan
Morning Day 4: Conkle’s Hollow

It wasn’t such a bad thing though. By breaking it down, we got to appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of each trail and waterfall and we also drastically reduced the occurrence of fussiness and meltdowns. In between activities we would return to our cabin to rest up and eat so that we would have the energy to go back out again. Our cabin was fairly close to all of the hiking trails/parks and the scenic drive through hilly farm country was something we didn’t mind especially because our son was super excited to see all the horses and cattle.

Stopping by the side of the road to say hello to this beautiful horse.

Well that pretty much covers all of the finer details of our trip. You surely must be wondering what is so special about this place that we keep coming back year after year. For that explanation we will just let our pictures do all the talking…

Ash Cave