However this trip was to be a first. It wasn't going to be just the two of us this time, or the two of us and one or two of her kids... no, this trip was the real deal: two adults, a nine year old, a six year old, a five year old, a five month old, and of course, my eight week old darling of the blogosphere!
Yep - Tuesday morning, after pumping our newborns full of formula in hopes that they would sleep the ride away, we installed my car seat base next to hers and the seven of us piled into the minivan to begin the trek.
Now, driving from her house in Basking Ridge to our hometown in PA can take anywhere from 2.5 hours if you ignore all posted speed limits to 7 hours if you get stuck in miserable Poconos traffic and there's construction on 80; one never knows what's in store, which is why we don't come home more often. Needless to say, we both began the journey with a slight stomach ache and crossed fingers.
The Cheeks usually sleeps during car trips; I have a cloth cover for her car seat that turns it from a room with a view to a sensory deprivation chamber and when we travel, I opt for the latter. Since she cried halfway from Hoboken to Basking Ridge (note to self: NEVER take the Pulaski Highway after 9 am on a weekday), I was pretty sure she would be good to go for the long haul and she was: she slept the entire trip to PA, even through the Wendy's burger run!
Jen's kids were awesome, as always. The three older ones sat in the back row of the van like three little ducks and happily wiled the time away watching movies and playing Angry Birds on our iPhones (Lillian, age 6, got me through the level I've been stuck on for weeks!). Spence, Jen's five month old, bapped happily from his car seat and only needed me to wrench my body around and feed him a bit of a bottle once. Jen and I gossiped about everything from our Facebook friend request queues to tougher stuff, like the reason she had to make the trip home.
I'll admit that I was scared to make the trip at first. Going out of my comfort zone with E hasn't been as easy as I had thought it would be before she was born; the anticipation of road trips and crying fits does paralyze me a bit however I knew I had to make this trip because it gave me the perfect opportunity to surprise my mom with a visit with the light of her life. You see, my mom had been in Arizona visiting my aunt and was returning late Wednesday night. What better thrill than to find me waiting for her at the Williamsport airport instead of my dad? The trip from my aunt's home, door to door, is about 17 hours but you wouldn't have known how exhausted she was because after one look at me, it registered that where there's daughter, there's granddaughter and her face lit up like an electric light orchestra.
So that's what I've been up to; I didn't want to blog or Facebook until my mom was home and had had her big surprise. My parents laptop is usually in use by my Ebay addicted dad, and since I didn't bring my Mac home and I hate blogging via iPhone, I've been MIA in my online life.
We head back to Hoboken tomorrow morning and I'm REALLY looking forward to seeing my Matty and so is Eliza... she'll remember him, right? hee hee.
thats really nice
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