PHL & back again

September 8, 2016

We haven’t done air travel as a family since last summer, when we brought A&C to North Carolina at ages 3.25 and 1.5.  I was traumatized enough by sitting on the runway for HOURS with a completely out-of-his-mind toddler to decree boldly:  “NOT AGAIN UNTIL HE IS 3!”.

Well, he’s not 3.  But Cameron is now 2.5 and he will (sometimes) sit to watch a TV show, and I guess those memories faded enough to allow me to want to attempt another journey away from our hot and sticky home, which is fantastic in December but not my fave right now.
Aaaaaand – it was generally a success!  We only went for 4 days:  Saturday to Tuesday.  I personally find travel with the family fun but exhausting, and I don’t think I would have lasted much longer in good spirits.  And I feel like we packed a lot in during that amount of time.  My only mistake was not taking yesterday off.  I soooooo needed a day to recover from everything, get life back in order, generally catch up.  
Trip highlights:
Getting to hang out with my parents!  The kids loved spending time w/ Grandma “Ga-ma” & Grandpa “Ga-pa” (the latter are C’s pronunciations).  
Seeing two of my fave blog friends (one anonymous one not!) — a night out w/ great wine & conversation
Seeing my aunt, uncle & cousins that I hadn’t seen in forever
Running in sub-70 temps!  One road run & one trail run at the Havertown Reserve
Visiting the PHL zoo and Chanticleer, an absolutely gorgeous garden
The trip in pix . . . (and in no particular order): 
water ice @ Pop’s!  (their first but probably not last!)

group photo in front of my aunt & uncle’s house

Annabel at the airport

Cameron in his element

Cameron in the same spot, 2 years later!

At Chanticleer garden being incredibly cute

more Chanticleer

Zoo face paint: step 1
Zoo face paint: step 2
Zoo face paint: epilogue

love
living the life

scene from my trail run
Don’t get me wrong – it was not a perfect journey.  A&C fought (we just didn’t take those pix!), ran like crazy people through the airport, and the whole thing was generally exhausting.  However, the memories are fantastic (perhaps one of those trips that is better in the past & future than the present!?).
Aaaaaaand . . . now we are back.   Activities & school are in full swing, I am back to work, and at least the idea of fall is in the air.  Annabel’s coveted Spider Girl costume came in the mail and we are talking about Halloween, so I think that counts.  Back hopefully tomorrow with more.

4 Comments

  • Reply Laura Vanderkam March 10, 2019 at 7:10 pm

    I love the face paint epilogue photo. Yep, that’s how it always ends up!

  • Reply susanruns March 10, 2019 at 7:10 pm

    C in the hammock – that is fantastic!

    I don’t have the stress of kids to add to my vacations/trips, but I still find myself so worried about them that I sometimes just wish they were over and I had the memories. My friend visited Chicago last time I was home, and I was so nervous about helping her see everything in only a few days that I got so worked up – once we were out doing things, it was totally fine and we both had a great time, but I was worried the whole time she wouldn’t enjoy her trip. Living in the moment is hard!

  • Reply Arden March 10, 2019 at 7:10 pm

    I want that spider girl costume for ME. How awesome….

  • Reply Alison March 10, 2019 at 7:10 pm

    The epilogue photo made me laugh! 🙂

  • Leave a Reply

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.