Exploring the world and scratching off as we go

This post is sponsored by Uncommon Goods.

It's wedding anniversary month over here and I've been feeling really nostalgic lately (more so than usual, hah) thinking about all the years and memories that Brandon and I have shared together.  It's our seventh wedding anniversary this year, but we've been together since December 1999 (shout out to the 90's!), so we're actually working on year sixteen as a pair.  That's a whole lot of life together.

I was recently contacted by Uncommon Goods to take a look at their Gifts for Men ideas(check them out here), and I was delighted to find their scratch off national and world maps.

I knew it would be a fun way to celebrate our anniversary and all the places we have visited together. You see, many, many years ago (were we still in high school?) Brandon and I created a "together bucket list" that included places all over the world we wanted to visit and also included "visit all 50 states."

Well, after sixteen years together: six of which were long distance, seven of which were married, three kids, two rented apartments together, two owned homes together, two dogs, a cat, and a handful of fish (hold the partridge in a pear tree please), we've been slowly (ever so slowly) working our way on exploring the world together.

We started with our national map and felt compelled to set rules for how we would go about scratching the states off because we're big time nerds and serious about intention.  I mean, it seems sort of like cheating to scratch off all of Texas when we've really only been to Austin.  But Brandon reasoned that if we were only going to scratch the states off by how many cities we've visited, could we even scratch off our home state of Pennsylvania?!  So our rules for scratching in USA were as followed:

• We had to have visited together (sorry Arizona, California, Louisiana, Connecticut, and Tennessee!  Not yet!)
• We had to have at least slept over one night for the visit to count (drive-bys and airport lay-overs don't count)
• Even if it was in only one city in the whole state, it counts as a state visit!  We want to get to all fifty after all :)

After laying out the ground scratch rules, we set to uncovering the states below the top scratch layer all the while chatting and reminiscing about the places that we've traveled together.  

Chicago, IL 2008

Oahu, HI 2009

We are both born and raised in PA which naturally lends to scratching a fair amount of the our northeast USA map.  (although we really need to get to the north-northeast:  Maine lobster? yes please).  Also, this is a public apology to Delaware! In that whole mix of visited states and it's the only one not scratched!  I promise, we will visit soon - any readers from Delaware with some suggestions of places to visit that is little-kid friendly!?

Punxsutawney, PA 2007

When we were all finished scratching and talking, we stood back and felt both parts proud and excited for the future.  Somehow seeing it all visually gets us feeling inspired in all the places yet we can plan to go and show each other and our kids.  Northwest, we need you in our lives big time.  It's slow going with three little kids and work and commitments, but our USA scratch map, a 'work in progress' (direct link here) makes us feel excited and inspired to keep branching out farther and discovering new places with each other.

We pressed on to the world map (direct link here), and we were still talking about each of the places we've traveled together.  It was the same rules as for the national map:

• We had to have visited together (sorry Canada, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua!  Not yet!)
• We had to have at least slept over one night for the visit to count (drive-bys and airport lay-overs don't count. Sorry, South Korea!)
• Even if it was in only one city in the whole country, it counts as a country visit! 

Since we also have the national map, we decided that for the integrity of the world map, USA would count even though we are still majorly working on visiting states.  It's also a good visual for our kids who are trying to figure out how we fit in the world as Americans.  So all of our USA was scratched off on our world map, but what I liked about the Uncommon Goods world scratch off map  was that the state lines were visible, and if you only choose the world map alone, you would still be able to track your USA state visits within the whole world map view!

The memories went on as we scratched off the different countries we've visited together.

Ayutthaya, Thailand 2011

Negril, Jamaica 2008

Our world map is hardly what someone would consider well-traveled, but we look at as inspiration for all the places we can explore together in the future.  Maybe with our babies as they grow older, or maybe in some distant far off time when our babies are grown and it's just the two of us again (can you imagine?!)

Documenting our travels together has been on our married to do list for the past seven years!  I am so glad that I took a look at the Uncommon Goods Gifts for Men page (check it out here yourself) to finally check this one off of our list, and just in time for our anniversary.  As we worked on our map, I kept thinking of so many of you readers that I know travel as much or more than us.  I'd love to see and be inspired by your maps!

Besides the scratch off maps, Uncommon Goods truly has unique and inspiring gifts that I've been writing down to remember for upcoming birthdays and the holiday season.  and they are not only a great place to look for gifts, but also they're a company that you can feel good about supporting.  A privately-owned retailer based out of Brooklyn, NY that feature hand-crafted products that are created with the environment, people, and animals in mind.  Most of their products are created here in the USA and about a third incorporate recycled or upcycled materials.  They are also a B Corp business meaning that they meet the rigorous standards meant to solve social and environmental issues including wage levels, giving back to the community, and environmental impacts.  You can check out their Gift Ideas for Men page here and their Gifts Ideas for Women page here and their Personalized Gifts page here.

As for us and our travels plans for the near future?  We are keeping it stateside in the next few years because of financial limitations and also #bigfamilylittlekidsprobs But we're thinking of doing another family road trip adventure soon and going Northeast (I wasn't kidding Maine Lobster) to spread our state wings a little more.  I also have a inexplicable jonesing for New York/Adirondack exploring.  We've also set a goal to visit DisneyWorld in the next two years (!) and Alaska in 2019 (!!!)

Here's to continuing to explore and discover with my favorite guy in the whole world.
Where you go I will follow.
Where you are, I am home.

Tacky Box Review: Cleaning up the way we speak

Unless this is your first time here (hi & welcome if it is!), you know we are all about kindness over here at Team Studer.   One of the ways we try to practice kindness everyday is in the way that we speak.  Ask any close friend or relative - my kids are notorious for announcing, "We don't say ###."  Some of the things that "We don't say" are words like 'stupid,' 'shut up,' or any curse words.  While watching The Grinch with Grey this past holiday season (the one with Jim Carrey), Grey would announce aloud every time, "We don't say idiot!"  He is like our little language police over here!

We have been doing very well with continuing our practice of kind speech but there was never any reason announced to the kids as to why we don't say those things besides telling the kids that 'it's not nice.'  And then I was contacted by the folks over at Tacky Box and I was thrilled to get a chance to review their new Tacky Box set as a tool to help children (and adults!) practice kindness in the way that they speak.

Chris Kent Phelps and Cindy Kent; a Mum and Grandma duo,  created the Tacky Box set to use as a fun and easy way to talk to kids about unkind language and how it might hurt others.  The book; Max's Magnificent Choice (there is also a Margo's Magnificent Choice version) along with the actual Tacky Box come together as a set.  The Tacky Box and accompanying book have been proven as great visuals for young children to make connections between the words that we say and how they may affect those we say them to.




We were eager to read our 'monkey book' (described by our 22month old Gemma).  The kids sat nicely for the reading of the book.  Each page is illustrated with bold colors of jungle scenes.  For a 22month old and a 3 and a half year old, the words on each page were just the right length to allow them to pay attention for each page.

I made a point to stop during the reading when Max chose to say anything that we 'don't say' at our house.  I'd turn to the kids and say, "Uh Oh, that wasn't a very nice thing to say!" or asked Greyson, "Why do you think the other animals didn't want to play with him?"  It was a nice interactive read that kept Greyson's attention for the entire book.

After reading about Max's Magnificent choice (to stop saying unkind, 'tacky' things), I showed the kids our very own tacky box.  Which, they were overjoyed to see we could have one of our own!  We got right to sharing and painting the box together while I wrote our family's name on it since we can always use the practice of using kind words!

After our Tacky Box was dry, we took a few minutes to talk about the book again and how Max made a magnificent choice to speak nicely to others.  Grey was very excited about coming up with Tacky Words to add to our box as well.  The thing I loved about the book and set combo is that at three and half, our son has trouble thinking up words and ideas out of thin air.  But because of Max's story, he was able to use the Tacky Words that Max said in the book to start.  Our first three tacky words were the same that Max said in the book, but thinking about Max helped Greyson begin to think about tacky words (and things 'we don't say') from our own life.  So we added some of those in as well. 

Our Tacky Box is sitting prominently in our living room as a reminder about speaking kindly to each other.  The week following our first reading, Grey said, "I don't like you!" and we reminded him that it was a Tacky thing to say.  The glimmer of realization was visible in his eyes that he understood both that it was not a nice thing to say and that it was hurtful to the person he said it to (me; his mum).  

I am anxious to see how over the next few weeks the Tacky Box continues to help keep us focused on speaking kindly to each other.  I will be back to update on any changes or improvements soon!

In the meantime - head over to these places to check out The Tacky Box 

Facebook

Website

Twitter

Pinterest

Youtube

And make sure to see how the  folks over at Tacky Box have started a Campaign for Kindness.  It is a mission meant to provide Tacky Boxes to Kindergartners all over the nation; in hopes that we can help kids make the 'Magnificent Choice' to choose kind words. 

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disclaimer:  I was provided a Tacky Box set in exchange for publication of my review and experience with the product.  Opinions in this post are my own.