Friday, July 4, 2008

Family Reunion

First, I must say that I am quite behind in blogging! The reason, you see, is that I am hard at work on a super secret, time consuming craft project. Can't say more, as the recipient reads this blog! ;)

Anyway, last weekend I took the boys (by myself, I might add... not that anyone will be much impressed with me) up to PA to visit my grandmother, view the house my dad is planning to buy there, and attend an annual family reunion picnic. I want to go ahead and give some huge kudos to my friend Kara, who just returned from a month long driving trip across the country with her three and two year old boys. I believe she said that they traveled over 6,900 miles. I am in total awe, as I barely made it the 300 miles round trip to PA with my two boys. There was poop, there was crying, there was peeing, and there was even vomiting. There were cheesy hands smeared ALL over the backseat of the car. There were vows never to take my children anywhere again. And that's only the stuff that happened during the drive!

Drive aside, the family reunion was great. Jack and Alexander were very well behaved. There was a sand volleyball court that occupied Alexander for at least an hour. There was no shortage of relatives available to hold Jack while I ate yummy picnic food. Jack went peacefully to sleep not once but twice as I strolled him around the playground. I'm pretty sure that Alexander's favorite part was the "candy scramble." Have you ever heard of this before? It's pretty barbaric, really. Some crazy (but well-meaning) grown-up gets a bag of candy, throws it all over the grass while the children are held squirming by their parents, and then when the grown-up says, "go," the children all run out and grab up as much candy as they can. Does it surprise you that the grown-up who instigates this game is NOT one of the parents of these small children? ;)Alexander grabbed up a bouquet of lollipops and was pretty darn pleased with himself. And I am pretty darn pleased that in a few minutes, I can sneak downstairs and STEAL one of those lollipops after Xander goes to bed! WHOO HOO!

3 comments:

Tammy said...

Glad you had a fun time while you were there despite the trying car ride! I'm impressed with you making the trip on your own - I don't think I'd be brave enough to do it!

Anonymous said...

I'm so with you on the long car rides.. Ugh! No idea how Kara did it. Within 30 mins on our way to OC, the boys started the "Are we there yet?" Vermont is gonna be fun. Not!

Glad you all had a great time though!

Melissa said...

Wow, very impressive that you made the car trip. We took Piper to Ohio a couple weekends ago, and she wanted me entertaining and/or feeding her in the backseat pretty much the whole trip (minus her nap). I was thinking I could never do a long trip on my own. You continue to amaze me with your super mom skills : )