I didn’t intend to take a blogging break. Oops!

After we moved to a house, I feel more uncomfortable posting about upcoming trips, especially long ones that take us away from home for a long period of time. The part that stinks is that I can’t talk about any upcoming excitement or preparation for the trip! Since it’s usually the biggest thing on my mind right before I leave, I tend to just not say anything at all… And of course it felt weird to blog while we up at my in-laws without mentioning that I was in New England. Hence, the blogging break.

So we left last Friday (Jan 21st) for New England. I talked last November about our growing concerns about flying. I’ve been disenchanted with flying for a while now… I feel that airlines are nickle-and-diming you to death, people are herded around like cattle, no one is treated with respect, everyone is treated like a terrorist. Maybe it’s necessary, but we’re just getting tired of it. We always knew at one point we wouldn’t be able to fly anymore, as we started adding in the cost of tickets for our kids. Also, flying means renting a car which is expensive as well. So we knew that we were going to have to learn to make the drive – at around 18 hours it really isn’t as bad as it could be.

My brother-in-law Tim joined us for the trip since he has the whole month of January off work. He not only was an extra driver, but also someone in the backseat to entertain Savannah. I think she gets bored back there by herself! It was so helpful to have him along.

We had a lovely week up in New England, visiting friends and family. We got to see snow. A lot of snow. I am completely snowed-out, and don’t care to see any more until next winter. The idea of going up in January was to celebrate a late Christmas, but to be honest I’d rather go up at a time when we can explore the area where my in-laws live instead of hiding out in the warm house. So we’ll have to adjust our time of year to visit them.

Savannah’s grandparents just absolutely love her, and we were sent out on date nights (whether we liked it or not! hehe) so they could get a chance to babysit. It was nice! I enjoyed being with Paul, and I enjoyed the break from Savannah. Win-win situation for everyone.

We drove back last night. Here are the stats:
12 states (Georgia – South Carolina – North Carolina – Virginia – West Virginia – Maryland – Pennsylvania – New Jersey – New York – Connecticut – Rhode Island – Massachusetts)
9 interstates/highways
18.5 hours there, 17.5 hours back

On the way there, we switched drivers more often… on the way back, we each took one 6 hour shift. We left around noon/1pm both times and got in the wee hours of the morning. Savannah did great! Whoever was in the backseat played with her, and she slept most of the night. There weren’t many places where we could let her get out and stretch, but we tried the best we could. We had lots of noise-making toys which she loves. We listened to an audio book to help pass the time. On the way up was The Kite-Runner, which I may write a separate blog post about. On the way back was a Mary Higgins Clark mystery which was light but a little too short. Audio books are great to help pass the time though. And it was fun to discuss the book – I think we talked about The Kite-Runner all week. :-)

I hope to get back to more regular blogging now that we’re back. :-)