Noel, Greg and Diana came down a few days before and Camille flew down leaving James and I to drive down with the boys. We still have Charlie with us although we weren't sure if he'd be coming with us until last week. But I am so glad that he could come and he is beyond excited! He can't wait to meet Mickey Mouse. :-)
We left Thursday evening to get a few hours down and I am so glad we did because we had a lot of traffic delays on the drive down. Of course, we hadn't even left town before Charlie asked "Are we almost there?" That first night we made it to the New Jersey border before finding a hotel after 11:00. The kids were all super excited it took a couple hours to get them all to sleep.
But we were happy with our progress and didn't worry about getting on the road too early on Friday. That was a mistake. We hit a ton of construction traffic and even had two instances where the police purposefully slowed traffic for no discernible reason. The first time, one police car drove back and forth across three lanes slowing everyone on the highway to 30 miles an hour for at least half an hour. The second time four state troopers blocked all the lanes of traffic and moved forward at only 5 miles an hour also for at least half an hour. It was very odd.
Because of the maddening traffic we didn't make it as far as we had hoped but despite our frustrations it was not entirely a bad day. The boys are all excellent travelers were in good spirits. Will spent most of the day reading his books and Charlie spent his time taking in his loud, excited voice. "Are we at Disney?" "Oh look! It's mud!" "What are they building? I think a truck." "I wanna go to Disney! I wanna see Nana!" At one point we had to turn around in the parking lot of a derelict restaurant and Charlie asked again "Is this Disney?" "Yes, it's Disney" James sighed. Charlie's whole face lit up "It is? I love Disney!" James felt very bad, but Charlie wasn't too disappointed when he learned the truth.
After six hours on the road we stopped at a little town in Virginia to stretch our legs. The town was very cute and I wished that Camille was with us because she would have loved it. We even stopped in at the tourist information center and played some checkers. As we were walking through town we came to a little park with a blossoming cherry tree. Jon was so excited "It's pink snow!" and so we had to have a cherry blossom snowball fight. We pelted each other with petals and Will even snuck up and dropped some down the back of my shirt. It was so much fun!
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| Checkers with Jon |
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| Attacking Mommy |
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| Throwing pink snowballs |
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| Will flees from an attack |
After our pink snowball fight we found some ice cream and
strolled along the town dock. The ice
cream was good but it was clear that we were no longer in New England because
the portion sizes were so small. As we
walked away licking our cones Will said “This is the first day we've had ice
cream. Sheesh! It’s been like a week!”
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| Ice cream! |
We made it back on the road just in time to sit in a two
hour traffic jam which pretty much set the tone for the rest of the night. As it got dark the children begged to stop at a hotel but we had made so little progress during the day that we had to make up the lost time. The boys fell asleep eventually but poor Charlie was uncomfortable and kept waking up. After midnight we had made up enough ground to stop but the hotel we found only had smoking rooms. James checked the room and it didn't smell to strongly and Charlie was crying so we decided to go for it on the assumption that we would get used to the smell and be asleep soon anyway.
But it turns out that the smell isn't the worst thing about cigarette smoke and that I am much more sensitive to it than I thought. After half an hour in the room my throat was burning and I couldn't stop coughing. Thankfully Will and Jon were asleep five minutes after getting in but Charlie would not go back to sleep. He wiggled and kicked and jumped and sang and gave no indication of being the least bit tired. I took him into the darkened bathroom with me thinking that the steam would sooth my ragged throat and the sound of the shower would lull him to sleep. I was wrong on both counts. James took him outside where he discovered that the car light was still on but thankfully the battery hadn't died. Finally, sometime after 4am, Charlie fell asleep.
Saturday was a much better day. Everyone slept until almost 9 and we were out the door as soon as we awoke, mostly to escape the oppressive smoky room. And our drive was much better. We had no traffic, no construction and no bad weather and so we were able to make very good time. And as always, the boys were entertaining. Jon, "Charlie do you want to be a king when you grow up?" Charlie, "No, I wanna be a trucky!"
The first Saturday in May is Free Comic Book Day and our local comic book store holds a huge town wide event to celebrate. It is one of the highlights of our year and the boys (and me and James!) were sad to miss it this year. So instead we made a detour to a comic book shop in Savannah, Georgia. It wasn't anything like the one at home but we all got some comic books and even some Iron Man masks! Will didn't talk to anyone for the rest of the day because he was too busy reading. :-)
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| Comic books! |
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| Iron Man |
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| Iron Man 2 |
The rest of our drive was uneventful and we finally made it to Disney just before dark. The boys were so excited and rather desperate to get into the pool. It was raining and a little chilly though so we had to put off the pool for another night. Camille arrived soon after we did and Noel, Greg and Diana were already here so we are all together and ready to start our adventures. I can't wait!
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