Road Tripping

So, right around Thanksgiving, we decided, on a whim, to go to Pennsylvania for my Grandma's Christmas dinner. She has had the extended family over for this dinner every year since we were little, but my family never went because we lived like 20+ hours away and would go every summer to visit instead. So, being that we are only 10 hours away here in South Carolina, I decided that in order to make Christmas a little less lonely, we should go up for a visit. Granted...we traveled to PA the day Aidan turned 3 months (we flew and then drove a few hours) and I swore never to take a 3 month old to PA. It is funny how this trip just happened to fall on the weekend that little miss Nora turned 3 months as well. Different 3 month old, different trip experience.

We decided to get up at 4:45am on the day of the drive in order to get an early start. Aidan ended up waking at 4:20 and needing "his covers on" and then Nora woke 15 minutes later to eat. So, we managed to get out of the house and on the road by 5:30am with one sleeping baby and one very talkative toddler. It was actually really nice driving in the dark and waiting for the sun to rise. We had our pumpkin flavored coffee to sip on and stopped for breakfast around 7:00. We ended up stopping a lot more than I had planned due to Nora screaming bloody murder when she woke up or when she wanted to go to sleep. She just had a few very rough intervals, but slept a lot of the trip thankfully. We made it there by 5:30pm and had a nice dinner with the family.

Oh, and did I mention that my brother, sister-in-law, two nephews (one I had not yet met) and my mother were there? After getting this grand idea to go up to PA, I convinced my brother's family to come down from PEI, Canada too. Then my mom just had to fly up and see us all since all 4 of her grandbabies would be there. It was lovely being with family again.

Needless to say, the time there was well spent. The kids were great, we got to visit with a lot of my extended family etc... Nora got a bad cold the day before we left and spent our last night crying a lot and waking every hour or so.

We decided to split the trip home into 2 days and we drove down to D.C. and visited the Museum of Natural History with my brother's family. After that, we parted and drove a couple hours and stopped for the night. We have never stayed in a hotel with our kids before and I was seriously afraid it was going to be a disaster, but Aidan went to sleep shortly after we got there and Nora did too....except she woke a lot again because of her cold.

We woke to snow falling the next day and drove for a while in snow and then freezing rain. Nora was not a happy camper for this drive at all and it was a lot of craziness in our car for most of the trip home. We did, however, make it home that evening (a 5 1/2 hour trip that took us 8 hours) to the nice 62 degree weather in South Carolina.

Even thought the drive home was rough, I am so glad we made the trip with the kids. Nora has had a hard few days getting over her cold and realizing that I am not going to hold her for all her naps from now on, but things should settle back down soon.