About Five Wild Chapters

Documenting our family road trip adventures since 2017.

We're road-trippers at heart. No fancy resorts or international flights — just a family of five packing the car, loading up on snacks, and heading out to explore what we can reach by highway. We don't do fancy, and we're perfectly okay with that.

In 2017, I grabbed a cheap sketchbook from our neighborhood Walmart and started documenting our first "official" family vacation to the Wisconsin Dells. That little notebook became our travel companion — filled with pre-trip research, daily weather notes, activity logs, food discoveries, and candid reflections. It lived in my car for years, until I recently cleaned it out and realized I'd left it at home during a vacation. That's when this digital version was born.

Book reviews, reading lists, and literary adventures.

Reading has always been my escape, my education, and my entertainment. The Reading Hall is where I track the books I've loved, the ones that disappointed, and everything in between. You'll find honest reviews, themed reading lists, and my ever-growing TBR pile.

I read across genres — literary fiction, fantasy, historical novels, memoir, romance — because life's too short to limit yourself to one category. Some books get five stars and go on my "reread someday" shelf. Others get honest critiques about what didn't work for me. Either way, you'll get my genuine thoughts, not curated perfection.

Find me on StoryGraph (@ilreadingmama) and Fable for more reading updates and book club discussions.

Testing recipes so you know what actually works.

I'm not a recipe developer — I'm a recipe tester. There are enough creative cooks out there inventing new dishes. What I do is take existing recipes, make them, and tell you honestly whether they're worth your time and ingredients.

Did that viral TikTok recipe actually work? Is that "30-minute weeknight dinner" really achievable with three kids running around? Does that Instagram-worthy dessert taste as good as it looks? I'll test it and give you the real story — the successes, the flops, and the tweaks that made things better.

Whatever has captured my hyperfocus this month.

This section is where I document whatever has my attention right now. It might be fountain pens one month, true crime podcasts the next, then urban planning, vintage typewriters, or medieval architecture. These deep dives are genuine, enthusiastic explorations of topics I'm passionate about in the moment.