Joe's First Vacation

A big apology to Omma, Appa and my family and friends for neglecting this blog.  The past few months I have been insanely busy with work, moving and getting settled in to our new house (no end is in sight, but that is another story entirely) and haven't found the time to update you all on Joe Sung Min and his progress. He is doing VERY well, by the way. :) I think I've successfully cleared all the cobwebs and tumbleweeds from this page and am ready to do this.

For the past 5 years, I've packed Liv up each summer and driven the 8+ hours to visit my family in upstate New York.  This year was going to be a new adventure: me with TWO kids. In a car. For hours. One kid (Joe) who does NOT like to be in the car for more than an hour at a time.  This was going to be interesting.

Liv was up bright and early and helped me finish packing up the car. We were hitting the road a little later than I had hoped (6:15 am) but there were no tears so I considered that a small victory.  Unfortunately, I realized I had Brian's keys with me so we had to turn around but we were back on the road in no time.

We sailed through Ohio, Pennsylvania and through Buffalo before taking a break.  The kids were relaxing in the back seat watching movies, snacking, coloring and zoning.  I was quite pleased with how smoothly the trip was going.  After we took care of business inside the rest stop, the kids ran around and let off some steam.  Liv was a very sweet big sister and helped her brother run up and down the little hill over and over again. And then, we were off to continue our journey.  Luckily for everyone involved, it was a quick ride to Rochester to the incredible Strong Museum of Play, where we were meeting Liv's little buddy, Owen.  Owen was the ring bearer in my niece's wedding over Thanksgiving weekend.  You can read more about that here.

First up was the carousel in the lobby. As you can see from the picture below, it was a big hit.  For the next two hours, the kids shopped, built and destroyed, climbed, learned, played some old school video games and ran in different directions.  I'm glad I was there with another family because Mr. Man has his own agenda and was not, surprisingly, attached to me at the hip.  Let me just say that this kid is fast.  And it is a good thing he is so cute.

Sadly we had to move the museum and continue our drive to Auntie Jen and Uncle Dave's house. Surely the kids would sleep in the remaining four hours. Who was I kidding? Joe may have slept 45 minutes, a far cry from his 2 -3 hour naps. Liv? Nothing. She was too excited to see her cousins, their dog and, most importantly, the pool in the backyard.  At this point I need to give a shout out to our friends the Imagination Movers.  Were it not for their Rock-O-Matic CD/DVD (and their others), we would not have survived the remaining hour and a half of the ride. Works WONDERS on the little man, he is mesmerized by them and loves singing along with his big sister (and me,too!)

To be continued...