Vision Friendly Family Vacation and Activities

Have you had a memorable vacation? Our family has enjoyed going to a small island here in Georgia. Jekyll Island is the perfect combination of beach, camping, and activities. We have been 3-5 times as a family and each time we go we have favorite things that we love doing. And making them so Mom can enjoy them with us is a huge bonus!

Mom loves enjoying the beach! We enjoy time in chairs reading (mom reading braille books) listening to the waves. Mom also enjoys us describing what we see. Sometimes when we walk along the beach I describe to her the people we pass, or the kids playing in the water. If we go during sea turtle egg season we enjoy describing all the nests and sometimes the eggs that are cracked.

We enjoy going bike riding while on the island. Now some of you may be thinking your mom is blind how do you ride bikes? Great question! A lot of blind people do ride regular bikes or do a tandem bike. But with us kids being young the first couple times we went the bike rental place has surreys!

So it has two rows of seat so up to 6 can fit. The four corner seats all have pedals. And the front seats have the steering wheel and brake. So we would rent for an hour and take a ride along the town. When Mom and I went before I had my daughter we did a two seated bike that sat us side by side and the puppy walked along with us.
Here is a picture of us four kids in the surrey. And one of Mom and I on our two seater bike. We enjoy biking on vacation although we don’t normally do it while at home.

Mini Golf is a fun activity.
We have done mini golf I think 2-3 times. We have really enjoyed it. We aim mom in the right direction and have her swing. When she gets closer to the hole we will stand next to it and make a noise before she swings so she could tell how far away it is and the general direction.
I have some of the main course we have played on down at Jekyll Island.

Bowling!

My mom learned to bowl while at residential school. We do have to use the bumper guards, but honestly I need them for myself!
We line mom up towards the middle of the pins.Then we show her arm the direction to swing and vacate quickly. Mom then goes and throws her ball. She has made a number of strikes and a couple spares!
The hardest part is when your moms score is higher than yours and she can’t even see the target! We haven’t bowled as much recently, but it used to be the family activity when my brother came home from college! Plus I could find good discounts. Mom really enjoys being able to be apart of game!

Ice Skating!

So our family never really did any ice skating until my husband and I were looking into courting. We have taken mom twice. She usually just stays near the wall, but she is getting better each time. The hardest part is trying to lead her up to the rink and on the ice. But she has been a champ doing it!

Road Trips!

Let’s start this week with road trip talk!

I didn’t realize how much our family traveled until I started dating my husband. My parents both moved down south; while my mom is from further up the east coast, and my dad’s family is more north central. So we took yearly trips to visit family.

Now we travel for state conferences, national conferences and of course for fun! One way we make the trip go by is having mom download some audio described movies. Which is actually audio files with the video and description. This helps on a late night of driving.

For mom we also try to mention how far to the next big city! We also enjoy talking about rest stops and restaurants or interesting traffic. It helps for mom to know what is going on and helps make sure that the driver isn’t falling asleep!

How do you make the best of long road trips?

Conference and Conventions!

No matter the type of of convention there is always a learning curve. That includes learning where your room is located at the hotel.

We also have to learn where the meetings will be held. At national conventions I usually only tell mom the room she will use instead of doing a hotel orientation for the entire conference center. Mom also has a guide dog which means we also have to find the relief area so when her dog decides to go potty at 3 am I can find where to take him.

For smaller local conferences it is not so hard to learn since we usually have 100 participants at most. These events can be very overwhelming, but they are so full of fun things. I always enjoy doing a couple local tours and meeting people from the area.

What have you experienced at conferences or conventions you have attended?

Our Fun Family Memories

One of my favorite memories from almost 3 years ago with my mom was at our state fair. We were headed home from Jekyll Island. I had seen cheap entry tickets for this fair. It was kind of on our way home and I had never been to this one.

Mom and I were at the beginning of the day so not a lot was happening. But we saw our first monkey riding dogs race. Mom really wanted to be able to pet the monkey. So I was willing to pay the $5 for a picture of her with the monkey. But the guy wouldn’t let me pay and actually shooed customers away to allow mom to learn about the moneys.This cute guy loved mom and crawled up into her lap multiple times. It was a very fun memory.

So here is a picture of Mom with the monkey on her lap.

Our Longest Road Trip

We took a trip out to Oregon for my baby brothers graduation 5 years ago. The fun fact about that trip is that we drove back from Oregon to Georgia. We fit five of us and moms guide dog in a Toyota Corrola. We were also on a time crunch.
Thankfully we had four drivers so the first 24 hrs we drove straight other than stopping every 2-3 hrs for a driver switch, gas, and food. We spent the night in Nebraska and then headed home the next morning. It was a long trip, but we spent a lot of time listening to things from moms computer.
We also enjoyed playing trivia games. Looking for signs along the road and sometimes just remembering previous trips.

Monthly Round Up Video

The monthly roundup for this topic can be found on our CRAB page on Facebook.