Everyone loves to go to the beach over summer vacation. We love to escape the heat and humidity of Lancaster PA and travel 3 to 18 hours away for different heat and humidity. The great thing about going to the beach is that the only thing you have to do is... Nothing. You just relax. You can mix things up and read if you want, but even that can be a little stressful for the beach. That's the illusion of the beach anyway. Come, relax, and enjoy life. But some people have kids. And it's not always that simple. We are among the lucky to be blessed with two beautiful, healthy, full-of-life kids, and we are one of the many families attempting a beach vacation this summer. In this installment of Ryan's Ramblings I will be writing the happenings of everyday on our vacation. The good, the bad, and all the joys of parenting in between.
For a little back story... We have two kids; a 2 year old girl, Rylynn, and a 2 month old boy, Denver. Here they are right before were about to leave...
The plan is to spend a week at a beach house in St. Augustine, FL with the rest of my family. St. Augustine is not real close to Lancaster, Pa; about 14 hours driving. That seems a little far to expect our two lil'ns to be content. So, we decided to break it up.
We can check into our beach house in Florida at 4 o'clock on Saturday. So here is the plan we came up with to make the journey tolerable for us all...
Wednesday- Pack up and leave by 6 to arrive at the hotel in Williamsburg, Va by midnight
Thursday- Visit Colonial Williamsburg
Friday- Visit Historic Jamestown in the morning and then travel to Charleston, Sc in the afternoon.
Saturday- Explore Charleston and leave for Florida to arrive at the house around 4-5pm.
That's the plan... We'll see how it goes.
It started off great. While I was at work on Wednesday my amazing wife, Melody, got everything ready to go, while managing to take care of two kids (with some help from a neighbor). So, when I got home from work the car was all packed and she was just about finished nursing our son. I changed quickly, we loaded up in our new-to-us Camry and started on our trip... To Wendy's. We grabbed some quick grub and we were officially on our trek by 6:15 pm.
Williamsburg is only about 4.5 hours from Lancaster so we were hoping to arrive at our hotel before midnight. As we began to travel we, of course, came to an accident on the highway, which delayed us about a half hour. But both kids did pretty fair through that ordeal. Around 8:30 our son needed to be nursed again, so we pulled off the highway and me and Rylynn watched for airplanes while Melody nursed Denver. Thinking that I would be easier to feed him from a bottle in the car, Melody had procured some milk for him during the drive and started feeding him. He wasn't having that. After struggling with the bottle for a while, poor Melody ended up having to nurse frustrated Denver anyway. That was a lesson learned for us.
About a half hour later we were back on the road... With a new seating chart. Denver could not be pacified after feeding so Melody was forced to be squeezed between two car seats in the back to control the situation while I drove. She was able to get Denver calmed down, over and over again, while the constant "momma! momma! momma!" came from her other side. She handled the situation great and with patience only a mother can possess. Because of Melody's skills, the entire back seat was asleep at about 10:30pm and I was trying hard NOT to join them.
I try to find ways to stay awake while driving such as blowing ice cold a/c right in my face, listening to talk radio, or not listening to the radio at all and just singing to myself. I thought I was doing pretty good, but at about 11:30 the sound of rumble strips woke Melody. She could see I was struggling and engaged me in conversation, and before we knew it we had reached our destination. After quickly unloading all the luggage and children, we found our room, fed the baby, wrangled the newly energized toddler and went to bed. We had made it the first leg of our journey with little hassle. I thanked God for safety and an amazing family, and quickly drifted off to Lalaland.
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