I'm an environmentalist

I mean, not in the traditional sense necessarily (although sometimes) but on the "I need to know about my environment sense."

It's something I encourage everyone to try. I love figuring out ways to eek fun out of every nook and cranny of my home environment.

Currently, that environment is an island.
I've posted before about staycations and some of our favorite island activities. That's all well and good, but you've got to strive to find new and different things too. There are hidden gems around every corner!

Recently I've stepped outside my comfort zone a bit and found some real winners (and a few stinkers.) I keep thinking we'll run out of options because it's an island, but even after 12 years on this island I'm still finding new things.

Do you get out and explore your environment? What do you find?

The hardest part of doing something new is my kids. I'm often hesitant unless I have extra adults to help if things go south quickly. You never know when nap time, hunger, dirty diapers, bad attitudes or allergies will hit and it's hard to gauge how to handle these predicaments in new environments. Things get awkward fast.

To push myself outside my comfort zone I'm trying to come up with challenges to do stuff that's not my favorite. My first challenge idea was a beach crawl. This was a huge success and deserves it's own post so look forward to that soon.

The next challenge is new restaurants. I don't like eating out because I'm a really picky eater so it's usually a waste of money. But, I need to come up with date night activities for my husband and I so for the next month or two we are going to try restaurants that we've never been too. I don't expect this to become my favorite new activity but it should at least be interesting and should expose me to new people and places in my environment.

My challenges come with rules because it's more fun for me that way :) So, with that in mind, what should they be? I'm thinking a picture to prove I was there, a notation about prices and ambience and I'm not allowed to just order a burger at every single place. I would say pictures of the food but do you really want to see that?

Any suggestions for places I should try? Want to join my challenge and try at least 4 new to you restaurants in the next 2 months? It could be fun.

I think my next challenge with kids involved will be parks. Still brainstorming this one but there are a lot of great parks on Maui and I'm sure I'm missing out by never stopping at them.

Enjoy some pictures of my kids and I enjoying our environment this past month.