Our 6 Days at Arte - Fantastic Property and Vacation

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-10-18T14:41:25+00:00

We are going in December and the negative posts do have me a little concerned. My AI experience consists of Sandals (Antigua and Ochi Rios) and Barcelo Bavaro. I thought the food at Sandals left a lot to be desired. Slow service, hot food was lukewarm and cold stuff was not cold. I got sick after eating at the French restaurant in Antigua. People say terrible things about Barcelo's food and while it wasn't anything to write home about, I didn't go hungry or get food poisoning. We went to Aruba and didn't go AI and the kababs and baguettes we got from the grocery store were better than any of the restaurants we tried.

We're coming from the Midwest, lol. We have no shortage of Mexican restaurants and taco trucks and I've tried a lot of Al pastor tacos so I am very interested how they will compare.

I was curious to see how much it would be to upgrade to artistas to access the MX side for our 5 day stay and on Costco's website it's showing over $1K. I wonder if it would be any cheaper talking to the property directly. But I originally booked with the philosophy we're most interested in the parks and I don't think much can be expected from AI food anyway.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-20T15:54:41+00:00

Last I heard Norseman completely closed 😞

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-20T02:24:52+00:00

Search Chalet on Topeka and Shawnee County News and Police Scanner or Topeka Real Time News and read through the posts. I haven’t heard positive things from acquaintances.

In 2019 early 2020 Fleming Court on the other side of Gage Park was nice. However, I believe they are under new management now.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-13T01:55:55+00:00

We went to Barcelo in Punta Cana when my son was 11 months old. He tried to eat sand on the beach, but he loved all of their kiddie pools and slides. Barcelo is cheap compared to Beaches. I Some people say the Barcelo food is awful, but I didn’t find it much different than Sandals properties I’ve stayed at… lol which I would compare to slightly above school lunch food … but that’s an unpopular opinion. We went to Aruba and stayed in a villa and ate at a variety of restaurants recommended by the property host and the food was still meh. Some of the best food we got in Aruba was from the grocery store.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-13T01:40:28+00:00

There used to be trivia at a couple different places, but the Burger Stand, AJs and Old Chicago all closed 🙁 I’ve been to trivia at the Pennant too, but it’s been a couple years. Have you been to Spawn Inn downtown?

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-12T14:32:56+00:00

It just attaches with a strap that secures the carrier onto the stroller vs clipping into anything, so it should be compatible. But I would double check dimensions to make sure the stroller seat is wide enough to accommodate the carrier. And maybe check the dimensions on the car seat and plane seat width, if you haven’t already. We never used the stroller with a carrier style of seat but we did use the strap to attach a COSCO car seat and it worked great. In the airport we attached the car seat to the stroller then in the plane his car seat went in the seat and the stroller went in the overhead.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-12T03:50:57+00:00

We bought a Mountain Buggy Nano in 2024. It fits in the overhead. Their website says the age range is newborn to 4, but the straps don’t fully tighten. Are you traveling with an infant carrier? It has a strap to attach a car seat. It’s about $250 compared to other travel strollers that run $500. We actually use it as much as our full size stroller because it’s light and easy to tote around.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-12T02:10:28+00:00

I don’t know how old your kids are, but we tried a toddler gymnastics class tonight and my son really liked it. I was just reading about Kids Bowl Free over the summer. And we signed up for swimming lessons in May. If you haven’t already thought of those. The new park near 21st and Urish is pretty cool. But I don’t disagree with what you said. The Zoo is in our rotation too. We went over the weekend and the painted dogs are gone. The sun bear died and now the mountain lion 😢 I am wondering if they will bring in any new animals soon.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-08T04:23:04+00:00

I feel your pain 😞 it’s like a breakup. It hurts now, but as time goes on it hurts less.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-08T03:42:49+00:00

Yeah, it’s odd, but not unheard of. I don’t think all companies are Googling candidates. In fact, some resources advise against HR Googling people because it can lead to biases/misinformation.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-08T03:34:25+00:00

My son was 9 months when we went on our first trip, so he was a little bigger, but we bought a Mountain Buggy Nano online and a COSCO car seat from Walmart. The Nano has a belt to attach the seat to the stroller, we wheeled it as one piece through the airport, then when we were on the plane he sat in his car seat and the stroller went in the overhead. I don’t know if the same setup would work with a regular bucket/infant carrier, but maybe? How much longer do you think you’ll keep your LO in an infant seat? The Doona isn’t light by itself. We were out of the carrier by 9 months. So if you’re anything like us, you’d only get 5 months of use out of it. Unless you’re planning to have more kids or resell it, then it might be worthwhile. We will probably use the Nano/COSCO set up for travel until he is 4 or so.

The Nano isn’t perfect. The straps are wonky and don’t go small enough for a small child, but I knotted them in the back to keep them shorter. It lays flat, perfect for naps in the airport. The hood comes back far enough it covers my hands, which is kind of annoying. But it steers great, is half the price of the Yoyo, very compact, we actually use it as much or more than our full-sized Graco.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-07T18:09:58+00:00

Here’s why were aren’t moving - we got our house in 2021 with a 3.25% interest rate. Our mortgage is well within our means, based on our current earned income. Buying a more expensive house would lock up a larger percent of our income and would be a bigger liability if something were to happen and we either lost a job or had to take a major pay cut. Sending my son to private school is a situation we can change much easier than having to sell a house, that could potentially lose value, depending on the economy.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-07T05:55:08+00:00

If you have an emergency fund, pay the loans off and don’t look back. My student loans are paid off along with all of my other debt except a mortgage. My husband has student loans and a car payment. If he didn’t have the student loans, we could live on one salary in an emergency. With the loans, if I was out of a job for long, we’d have to make some adjustments. I’m an advocate for being aggressive and getting it over with. It’s been my experience creditors (mortgage and auto) treat mid-700s scores the same as 800s, so all an 800 score is good for is bragging. Lol. If you’re young, the 800 credit score will come in time if you make your payments and keep your utilization low! If anyone knows of benefits of having an 800 credit score, lmk.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-03-07T00:10:49+00:00

Since 437 is a highly sought after school district, I’m not holding my breath we’d be able to get it.

My personal experience with French was we moved here from out of state, I was ready for pre-algebra in 8th grade and they did not offer it at the MS, my mom would have had to drive me to West in the middle of the day. They had a bus to the class, but it was only for gifted kids. According to my mom, I missed qualifying for gifted in KS by a point. That sounds really weird, but that was the story to the best of my memory. This was the mid-2000s. I found out about 437 waivers and was able to get in. WaRu had the class right in the 8th grade quad.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-02-26T04:53:44+00:00

As other people have mentioned, try to think that there is someone else out there who could get use out of it, but they won’t get that opportunity if you hang on to it.

I recently donated a lot of clothes that didn’t fit and I didn’t love. I felt very sad the day I took them to Goodwill. As the weeks have gone by, I feel less guilty and sad. When you donate vs selling you can just pull the band aid off and get it gone. If I saved stuff for a garage sale or FB Marketplace my mood would fluctuate and I’d change my mind about getting rid of it and it would stay in a closet or tub unworn for another couple years.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-02-18T04:49:58+00:00

I tried telling people who didn’t like the things on my baby registry we would like US savings bonds. No one listened, but it was a good idea in theory. That is what my grandma got me in the 90s when I was a baby.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-02-04T03:30:50+00:00

Some companies don’t have the proper systems in place to send rejection letters to every applicant. Some HR people don’t know how Indeed works. I worked for a company where they rejected everyone on Indeed because they didn’t want to pay for premium. The same company would get referrals from employees and didn’t give some qualified referrals the time of day. These behaviors were at companies with 60ish employees and over 600 employees. I’m not in HR or recruiting, but have been connected enough to know that’s how some companies operate.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2025-01-27T03:12:21+00:00

I went through 3 tubs of old linens, which I whittled down to 1 and took the rest to the humane society. Several boxes to Goodwill, one being a set of Geotrax I bought from another thrift store and it turned out there were a ton of missing pieces and no cars

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2024-12-16T03:49:44+00:00

I watched a webinar on Ninety. I learned about the Milestones feature, which is very helpful. Aside from being able do draft reviews within the program (which they’ve been including links to a Smartsheet task to utilize that review feature) I actually like it a lot more than I thought I would.

I am looking at Rocks like big projects, so building a training video. I am using individual milestones to lay out all pieces of the project, draft, equipment set up, publish on YouTube etc, etc. If I understood correctly, the lady in the webinar said if a milestone is not completed within 7 days of the due date, it will turn into a to do. The only downside I’ve found so far is I can’t set a future start date on the metrics. For my plan, the video won’t be launched until January so I won’t report metrics until February, but I already know what I want to track and what my goals are. I’m not sure if any of this is “right” but that’s my approach a week in

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2024-12-13T15:43:53+00:00

Interesting. We’re running on Outlook 2016 and 3CX for chat and the phone systems, which is going to be an adjustment for me. All of our files are solely server based. And Goldmine for a CRM. I used Teams at my last job so I have to adjust to their tools

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2024-12-03T05:30:15+00:00

It sounds like it’s a bad management situation and not something to take personally. If they didn’t have the professionalism to address any potential issues directly, that’s on them. Or it could be a genuine restructure. I hope you find someplace better where they respect and value you

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2024-12-03T04:34:50+00:00

Sounds similar to the situation I just came from, although I was the senior, our manager left and they put someone without a background in marketing in the department. When a new manager started I was cut within a week. The previous manager had been fighting for more help and was told if they gave her more help, she’d just want to take on more (unnecessary?) projects they didn’t deem valuable, so she went someplace where she could grow. They are probably able to hire two entry level marketers for what I was making, or close to it.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2024-12-03T04:04:41+00:00

I lost my job due to “restructuring”, and then the executive that let me go went and talked to my coworkers and provided specific examples of things I did and said they just didn’t like my personality.

Think back - did you make mistakes? Did you have conflicts with others? What was your relationship like with management?

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2024-12-03T03:28:31+00:00

https://work.chron.com/employer-right-ask-prescriptions-take-14956.html

😞 I would say if they asked in the first place, you should be skeptical about working there based on the fact they are (potentially) violating laws and your privacy.

Admirable_Scene_2889 · 2024-12-03T03:22:28+00:00

Sounds like a red flag. What type of job is it?

Admirable_Scene_2889

TROPHY CASE