Boomerang "Kids"

A recent advice column I read was just plain disturbing.

It involved a mother who is a newly retired homeowner with an outstanding mortgage. Unless she was the CEO of a major publicly traded corporation, this lady is on a whopper of a fixed income.

Now get this – she has two sons, aged 22 and 24, living in her home and she has asked them to pitch in and pay $30 a week.

“Stressed-Out Mom” says that they are now “ranting and raving and calling her a bad… CONTINUE READING >>

Exclusive GypsyNester Merchandise for Celebrating Life After Kids and Breaking the Empty Nest Rules!
The Ancient Mayan Ruins at Tulum, Mexico
Tulum is not the kind of place that even the most wandering GypsyNesting-type will stumble upon by accident. It’s not on the way to anywhere. But since we found ourselves on the Caribbean coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, what’s known as the Riviera Maya, we hopped on a bus to the ancient Mayan site.

Our itinerary was set up to capture both… CONTINUE READING >>

Is The World Really Going to End in 2012?


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Is 2012 really the end of the world? We asked Carlos, a real Mayan, for his take on the… CONTINUE READING >>

Fear Conquering & Writing A Will
In the union of David and I, I am the less fearless. David has always been the adventurer – I am the homebody, the helicopter mom, the worrier. Selling the nest and heading out into the big, wide world, for me, was stepping outside the box. WAY out of the box.

My biggest concern was to have our affairs in order, in the event of my certain demise. It’s essential for me to be sure that the kids are not burdened when I go down in flames in a hang gliding / bungee jumping / snowboarding / street food eating episode… CONTINUE READING >>

Exclusive GypsyNester Merchandise for Celebrating Life After Kids and Breaking the Empty Nest Rules!
Getting Key-ed Up in Florida
One of the greatest drives in America has to be the trip down U.S. Highway 1 through the Florida Keys.

We made a stop at the incredible Coral Castle, ate enormous amounts of seafood at the Marathon Seafood Fest and, when we ran out of road, landed in Key West… CONTINUE READING >>

Stick a Fork in Us, We’re Done!
Our youngest, The Boy, graduated from college on Saturday. He’s somehow managed to graduate with honors, all while holding down two jobs. We can’t imagine having that much energy. As parents, we couldn’t be prouder.

In addition to the pride we feel for our son’s accomplishments, we have found other reasons to celebrate. This is the last year we’ll ever make a tuition payment, have an offspring on our medical insurance, or… CONTINUE READING >>

America’s Other West Coast
Who knew America has two West Coasts? Well now we do, after discovering Florida’s hundreds of miles of beautiful coastline facing west onto the Gulf of Mexico.

Sometimes called The Sunset Coast, most of it is much less crowded than the… CONTINUE READING >>

Exclusive GypsyNester Merchandise for Celebrating Life After Kids and Breaking the Empty Nest Rules!
Everglades Airboat Tour


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Gator Park had something that we’d been wanting to try for years, airboats. We, like most folks I suppose, were more interested in careening through the swamp at insanely… CONTINUE READING >>

Helicopter Mom – You Are Grounded!
“A mother is only as happy as her saddest child,” a close friend’s grandmother used to say. When I first heard her say this, all three of my children were young and safely in the nest so I could totally relate. Somehow I thought once they were grown up this would change. It didn’t.

Trouble finds its way into everyone‘s lives – and as much as we hate it – trouble finds our adult children. Whether it rears its ugly head in a… CONTINUE READING >>

Boy, Are We Everglade We Came Here!

Your GypsyNesters take on the Everglades – all good fun until a very uncomfortable Veronica gets her hands on an alligator!

We encountered gator wrestling, did some (really fast!) airboat riding and visited the smallest post office in the US.

And that’s just the beginning… CONTINUE READING >>

Exclusive GypsyNester Merchandise for Celebrating Life After Kids and Breaking the Empty Nest Rules!
Gator Wrestling!


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Our guide asked for volunteers to give it a try. With no takers, he chose Veronica to be the next challenger. He gave her just enough instructions to have us all questioning how crazy… CONTINUE READING >>

Top Ten Ways You Know Your Kid is Grown Up

10. You have Thanksgiving dinner at her home. You sneak the inedible parts to her dog.

9. He drops the F-bomb right in front of you. With no fear of an Ivory Soap sandwich.

8. You realize that you are sitting in the back seat. Of her car.

7. He cleans up after himself. While visiting your house!

6. She absentmindedly… CONTINUE READING >>

Meet Bigfoot’s Florida Cousin!
Skunk Apes are omnivores, with the ability to climb and make beds out of leafy branches, there are an estimated 7 – 9 of them in the Everglades, they like alligator caves, smell like rotten eggs, and they love lima beans. Skunk Apes lead a nomadic, hunter/gatherer existence, have a good memory and exceptional hearing.

We had to find one for ourselves, so we headed deep into the Florida Everglades… CONTINUE READING >>

Exclusive GypsyNester Merchandise for Celebrating Life After Kids and Breaking the Empty Nest Rules!
In Search of Skunk Ape


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Your GypsyNesters go deep into the Florida Everglades, miles from any signs of civilization, in search of the elusive Skunk Ape and found some … CONTINUE READING >>

Who’s Kidding Who?
The last task of raising a child is letting them go. Allowing them to flap their cute little wings and fly… giving them a gentle nudge out of the nest to get them airborne. Ah yes, little birdies, spread your wings and fly. OK, sometimes it’s more like a hard shove off a cliff… but the harder transition from the parent-child relationship to an adult-to-adult one must be made.

This process doesn’t happen overnight. The ritual sounds easy in theory, but it can be a bit sticky in practice. It’s difficult not to be mommy or daddy and even harder for the chicks not to revert… CONTINUE  READING >>

Life’s a Beach
Life’s a beach.  In Florida that little pun takes on some real meaning. Of The Sunshine State’s twelve hundred miles of coastline, over half is covered by beautiful sandy beaches.

We are big fans of the seashore, so much so that we spent almost a decade on a… CONTINUE READING >>

Exclusive GypsyNester Merchandise for Celebrating Life After Kids and Breaking the Empty Nest Rules!
Florida Biking, Beaching, Birding & Beasting


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The sand in Florida is packed down hard enough that we rode our bikes on the beach! Wow, Florida has a lot of wildlife… CONTINUE READING >>

Fear Conquering & Scuba Diving

Learning to scuba dive has been a long dormant dream of mine. I’m a water person, a good swimmer and love to snorkel. Scuba seemed the next logical step.

So I crammed my not-so-perky butt into a wet suit, strapped 16 pounds of weight around my waist (apparently I’m very buoyant) and jumped in. And immediately FREAKED OUT.

There I was in the ocean, treading water like a madwomen, embarrassed and humbled. What happened? I had aced the pre-ocean part of the lesson. In the swimming pool I was amazing – a scuba diving machine if there ever was one. I was practically one of those Discovery Channel shark chasers.

My mind frantically tried to grasp where things went terribly awry… CONTINUE READING >>

Pelicans Fighting Over Fish!


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These birds aren’t designed to be on land, they looked absolutely ridiculous, but it did give us the chance to see them closer than… CONTINUE READING >>

Exclusive GypsyNester Merchandise for Celebrating Life After Kids and Breaking the Empty Nest Rules!
Are Travel Agents Worth the Bother?
The nature of our travel style – what we call “traveling low to the ground” – does not conjure up images of luxury hotels, first class airline tickets and limousines. And for good reason. It’s not that we’re opposed to these things, in fact we quite like them, we just can’t see forking out the money for perks that don’t feel so perky when it comes time to pay the bill.

We are suckers for every tip and trick that will save us money while traveling. After all, we have embarked on a roadtrip that can only last as long our bodies and our mutually agreed upon funds hold out. Therefore, we have vowed to stay in shape and be as frugal as possible.

Plane tickets are… CONTINUE READING >>

Scaling the Donut Tower


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At The Blue & White, what really caught our eye was their signature dessert… The Donut Tower. Two hot caramelized donuts filled with ice cream and topped with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Don’t see how anyone could have the blues while… CONTINUE READING >>

A Little Talked About Sign of Aging
Here’s the thing. My best features come from my Romanian roots. I’ve always enjoyed having dark hair and blue eyes. I am psyched that my “gray” hair is silver, some people pay big bucks for that. Dracula was Romanian, and by most accounts was a particularly handsome man-thing.

That being said, we Romanians are a very hairy people. My beloved Grandpa not only had follicles growing out of his ears, but in his later years his lobes looked like small woodland creatures. My stunningly gorgeous mother had quite the collection of… CONTINUE READING >>

Exclusive GypsyNester Merchandise for Celebrating Life After Kids and Breaking the Empty Nest Rules!
Hey Mr. Spaceman!
For many of us the moon landing in July 1969 holds a prominent place in our memories. The scratchy black & white images are burned indelibly into our minds. We were children of The Space Age. We drank Tang, ate Space Food Sticks, watched The Jetsons and dreamed of Jeannie.

This made our visit to The John F. Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s Space Coast as much a trip down memory lane as an exploration of current… CONTINUE READING >>

How Do You Poop in Space?


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A little girl asks astronaut John Fabian how one poops in space. Mr. Fabian not only answers the question we’ve all been wondering about – but… CONTINUE READING >>

We Are So Thankful (Again!)

Every once in a while, we are hit over the head by a ton of bricks. While this would normally be cause for concern, this particular brickload is one of gratitude.

We have been blessed with amazing accolades from amazing folks! We have done really fun interviews and have been included in some pretty prestigious publication. We are truly honored. Click in to see why… CONTINUE READING >>

Exclusive GypsyNester Merchandise for Celebrating Life After Kids and Breaking the Empty Nest Rules!
A NASA Engineer Talks Neil Armstrong & Early Computers


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NASA engineer Roy Whitson was ready, willing and able to answer any questions that we could throw at him! He told us how Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, nearly botched… CONTINUE READING >>

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