We were nominated for a Sunshine Blogger Award by Wanderlust with the DeVaulls.  The sunshine blogger award is a peer recognition to inspire positivity and joy and to encourage bloggers.  Blogging is hard work and being nominated for this award shows me that my hard work is being noticed.  We connected with the DeVaulls on Twitter and I’ve enjoyed reading their posts and tweets.  When I started this blog, I would have never expected to win awards or even be nominated for one.  It was more just something for me to do, teach about epilepsy and hopefully monetize and help out with expenses and eventually get the chance to travel more.  I am so touched by this nomination.

Sunshine Blogger Rule

Thank the blogger who nominated you

Answer the 11 questions they’ve asked you

Nominate 11 other bloggers and ask them 11 questions

Have fun!

Well, here are our answers!

1. What is your blog about?
We are a lifestyle, travel and epilepsy blog.  We love traveling as a family and hope to eventually be able to get some comped trips so we can focus more on being a family and having fun, and less about what we have to spend when we travel.  I’d love to be able to take more trips and explore the US and hopefully one day other parts of the world.  I love to write and really love writing about the trips that we take.  I want others with larger families to be able to learn from our experiences.  We want to help influence others on family friendly places to go, places to stay and great places to eat.I also wanted to educate others on epilepsy, because it’s a disease that many people know nothing about, unless they have someone with epilepsy in the family.  I think it’s important that everyone knows what to do if someone around them starts having a seizure, because it is very scary.  I also think it’s important for everyone to realize that there is more than one type of seizure.  Not all seizures are the grand mal seizures that you usually think of when you hear the word seizure.  It’s even more scary when you see a child just pass out suddenly and don’t know what is going on or what to do about it.

2. How often do you blog?
I blog daily.  I might not publish a new post daily, but that’s not the only part of blogging.  There is research to do, if you are taking trips, you have to set up the trips, choose things to do, places to eat, places to stay.  You have to take pictures so that you have them for your posts.  If you are trying to get sponsored trips, there are e-mails to prepare and send out.  When you are trying to monetize your blog, there is also searching for and applying to be an affiliate.  There is also advertising the blog and trying to get followers.  For me, this blog has become a full time job in itself, and I’m loving every moment of it!  It has also become a stress reliever, as I can type out my thoughts and feelings and turn them into something wonderful!

3. Do you write your post out by hand first?
I may take notes or write down things that I want to say or stress so I don’t forget later, but no, I type everything.  I type much faster than I write and it’s much easier for me to get my thoughts down typing.

4. What’s one thing most people don’t know about you?
Everyone knows that I have a large family, but not that I was an only child growing up and raised by my grandparents.  They made me the person I am today and I’ll be forever grateful for that.Also, not many people know that I would love to learn how to fly a plane and/or helicopter.  My grandfather was a pilot, and an instructor at one time.  I pretty much grew up flying and miss it so much.  That’s one of the biggest things that I would love to learn how to do.

5. What is one thing from your bucket list?
Do I only get to pick one?   Well, I guess I’d say I want to travel the US.  I would love to just make a cross country trip with my family, visiting places I’ve never been and stopping to see family along the way.  Not have to worry about the cost of the trip or that my husband would have to take an extended break from work, but to just get in a van and drive from one end to the other.

6. Coffee or tea?
Tea.  Being raised by my grandmother, who was born in England, I grew up with tea.  So if I have the option, I will always choose tea.

7. What is the best movie you’ve ever seen?
I had to think about this one for a while.  I’ve seen a lot of good movies.  To me a good movie is a movie that inspires and encourages you.  I think one of the best that I’ve seen recently is A Question of Faith.  It’s about 3 families who were brought together because of a tragedy.  They each are hit by some sort of tragedy and have to work through their feelings and their faith before they can feel whole again.  The hardest part is watching the pastor blame God for his son’s death.  He has to relearn what faith in God means before he can be able to take his place as the Senior Pastor of his dad’s church.  Watching his struggles through this hard time makes you think about what you would do if you were in his situation.  If you ever watch this movie, you need to make sure you have lots of tissues by your side.

8. Savory or sweet?
Definitely sweet.  If I’m craving something, it’s almost always something sweet (or spicy but that wasn’t an option).

9. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever heard?
Don’t worry about what others think about you.  Get out there, find something that you love and do it.  Well guess what, I love computers, writing and website design.  With blogging I get the best of all of these things, plus I get to make my voice heard and hopefully can help others as well.

10. What does it mean to you to be happy?
This is a hard one to answer.  The definition of happy is feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.  For me, I enjoy the simple pleasures, watching my kids grow up, doing things for my husband and even watching the sun rise in the mornings makes me happy.  God’s best handiwork can be seen in a simple sunrise, as Leslie pointed out to me one day.  So for me, happiness can be found in other people’s pleasures.  If I can put a smile on one person’s face a day, it’s enough to make me happy.I hope daily that at least one person can get some pleasure from my blog.  Even if it’s getting enjoyment out of my frustrations, it’s worth it to be able to put a smile on someone else’s face.

11. What is some advice you would give to new bloggers?
Even if you are blogging, just for fun, I would advise you to get a self hosted platform.  You never know what it could become later on, you can monetize almost anything these days, but you can only do it if you are on a self hosted platform.  Also one of the biggest mistakes many bloggers make is to not build an e-mail list right from the beginning.  There are many free platforms out there that you can use to help build up your e-mail list and then later, when you are making money off your blog, you can pay for a better e-mail platform.

I hope you all enjoyed my answers. Thank you for reading and I hope you get some happiness out of my answers!

Make sure to check out Wanderlust with the Devaulls at https://withthedevaulls.com

My questions for my nominees are

1. What do you blog about?
2. Why did you start blogging?
3. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
4. Coffee or tea?
5. Who inspired/inspires you the most?
6. What is one thing from your bucket list?
7. What advice do you have for new bloggers?
8. What does happiness mean to you?
9. What is one thing about you that others don’t know?
10. What do you like to do in the evenings?
11. What is your favorite food?