February Vacation

We spent a couple of days in Lancaster County, PA in February during the kids' vacation.

I want to rename my street Chocolate Ave. I took this picture to present at the next town meeting that I attend wherein I will petition to have our awkward-named-after-a-dead-person-nobody-remembers road changed forever to glorious "Chocolate Ave." Maybe you'd all come and visit then.

A KISSES tornado. It leaves you owning more stuff, not less. And by "stuff" I mean, well you know.

David, Maura and Landon got in on the action by making their own kisses. (A gimmick to get you to pay 8.95 for the package at the end of the activity if you wanted) They didn't really make their own kisses like they thought they would, it ended up being just a cute side activity that they enjoyed.

Landon making his kisses

You can see the assembly line here:

Beauty comes in all shapes, sizes and sugar contents.

I know.

Chocolate World, Hershey, PA. It lived up to the hype- awesome place.

We stayed at the Willow Valley Resort in Lancaster.

It had an elevator, which resulted in many struggles and jostling for first place to press the buttons. Not every kid, just a couple.

I had a moment around this pool where I found myself in a really, really embarrassing situation. I am only telling you because I have no pride left to rescue me from writing this. The little frog slide dumps the kiddos into about a foot of water. I was concerned that if nobody was available to reach Landon when he came down the slide that he might end up under water, disoriented and panicky and whatever else bad thing could happen. So I was trying to get Maura to take position at the slide but the whole area was so loud I could hardly hear myself. No matter because Landon was already careening down the slide into the water and JUST AS I THOUGHT began thrashing panicked, face down in the water. So I marched right into the knee high water fully clothed, fully shoed and with my lifeguard face on. Just as I was about to heroically reach out and save my youngest child, he emerged from the watery depths and gave me a huge smile because he was having so much fun playing. With all the clarity that comes in those moments of mortification, I realized I am a complete spaz riding the edge of sanity, and in that spot in the pool, I pledged to be different. I walked out of the pool, ignoring the normal people who were watching me and sat with towels wrapped around my cold, wet jeans, watching my kids live their awesome little lives.

And then I realized I would have to buy a replacement pair of shoes. Win!

Landon is sweeter than chocolate sometimes. Especially when he calls me his Fairy Princess.

The freezing cold walkway that takes us to the dining room:

Adam back when he was 13:

Dave came fully equipped for water activities:

The pool area was awesome for the kids, everyone was able to enjoy this huge area.

Gord, ever the awesome father, was willing to swim whenever they wanted.

That's Landon dumping out of the big slide into 5 feet of water. Gord is off to the side not realizing that he has already come down.

Adam was really good about playing with Landon in the kid area too, and was near him when he attempted a flip in about 1 foot of water. He smacked his head into the bottom and when he came up he yelled at Adam "Why are you laughing? I have brain damage!".

That's my boy reading every spare minute.

Chillin' after a long evening swim:

We also shopped at some outlets (think new shoes), drove in some really awful weather, ate a lot of food at the smorgasbord, found something with Landon's name imprinted on it in the gift shop (YAY!!!), met up with a friend and her sweet little girls at Chocolate World, had a "my GPS can beat up your GPS" smack-down on the trip from CT to PA, (I won) and saw a couple of Amish people but that was really underwhelming.

Next time we go- you're coming with us. If you've been to Willow Valley Resort- leave a comment about your favorite part about it, because we want to go back there.

And with this, I close.