The Weekend

Friday night Michy worked late again. I called Cynthia to see if she and Marc wanted to bring the kids over and have dinner together. Sam was thrilled with the plan. He and Julia really love each other and play wonderfully together. Jonah and Isaac are ever showing signs that they will play together soon. They are basically still into parallel play but they are so darn cute together. Jonah is only 3 months younger then Isaac.

When Michy finally came home at nearly eleven she told me that the possibility had come true and that she had to work on Saturday. She said that she wanted me to go to PA with the boys and have a good time and they she'd catch up with me later. I had gotten the Amtrak schedule because somehow I knew this was coming. She left for work at 7:00 a.m. We talked about her coming on the train that got in at 6:27 p.m. Okay, so she'd make it in time for dinner. I got the car packed and the boys ready. Just prior to leaving I decided to see if Sally had to pee, Bernie wouldn't be picking her up until 4. Well the *!%!ing dog rolled in something horrid and she needed a bath. So, I quickly threw her in the tub and scrubbed. Then we got in the car and we were off. Lancaster is a 2 hour and 45 minute and actually it went quite well. For those of you that have never been to NJ, you aren't allowed to pump your own gas, it's illegal. So, we are in PA and I see a station that has gas for $2.68 a gallon, at home it's over three dollars. I pull into the station, rolled down Sam's window and I get out of the car. Sam says like he always does, can I give the car to the man. Usually I had the credit card to him and let him hand it to the attendant. So, now I'm at the pump and he's asking again to give the card to the man. I tell him that I have to pump the gas. I see his little mind churning and then he says, Mommy, you're the man??? I cracked up! So finally we get to the place, it's in the middle of nowhere. We went over a covered bridge to get there then through giant corn fields and finally turned down a farm road and saw the house. We were greeted by the owner, who I had talked to on the phone. She said, you traveled all this way alone with the children? So, I said yes that I had to pick up Michelle at the train later. She introduced us to her two grandchildren ages 5 (Isaiah) and 3 (Becca) and said that she had to run to the store that was closing at 1 and that her g-kids come show Sam the animals and we could show ourselves to our room. So we went in and dropped the bags down and used the bathroom. Cute house, religious references everywhere, the room was clean and decorated nicely with not too many little things for Isaac to mess with. Then we went outside. The boys were in their glory, there were about 10 kittens, many cows, goats, chickens, sheep, a pony, a dog and a bunny. Soon Sam is learning terrible things from the G-kids, they were picking up these kittens by one paw. Then Isaiah is throwing cow poop around telling me it's no big deal cause it's dried. OY! Then our friends arrived. They went inside to drop off their stuff and came out back. I was telling Tyson about the kids and he told me that we had to come up with a new name for them because everytime I said the children were.... He'd assume it was our kids so his name: Pawflinger. Sam and Ronan did learn a little about how to abuse a cat from the Pawflingers but that was quickly quelled went Sam got scratched. I explained that he needed to be nice to the cats so that they were nice to him and the rest of our visit went without incident. My brave little Isaac loved all the animals! So much that he tried to get into the cow pen and stuck his fingers into the mouths of all the goats. He was equally facinated by all the kittens and followed them everywhere. Angela had gone back into the house to go to the bathroom and when she came out she said, so your husband couldn't make it? Apparently this woman made the assumption that my husband wasn't coming but that I had a friend coming to join us. I never did address that since I felt like I wasn't really in on the conversation. We then left for Dutch Wonderland and had a great time! I had gone there as a child and had fond memories and it's still a really fun place. The kids went on lots of rides. I'm sure that we will go back there again. As we were leaving the sky started to get dark and then the rain came very quickly. Of course we were at the back on the park at they had closed everything since it was 10 minutes past closing time. It poured and we got drenched. There were mini rivers that we had to walk through that came up to our calves. So, instead of going straight to dinner we went back to change. We went to the County Kitchen at the recommendation of our host for a traditional Dutch dinner. I had chicken which was really great but the best was my veggies called chow chow. It's a mix of corn, carrots and bean kind of pickled. Yum! The boys mac and cheese was amazing too. After dinner we went to pick Mich up at the Amtrak station. She was happen that I had saved her the majority of my grape pie. I had the foresight to change the boys into their pj's in the restaurant parking lot so it was easy to carry both our sleeping boys in to bed. The next morning I volunteered to go to the Stausberg Railroad to stand in line for Thomas tickets. The advanced tickets were sold out and 10% of the tickets were available for day or purchase. I was told on the phone that they start selling at 8 but to get there at 7:30. Well at 7:20 there was already a line of 25 people. They finally opened at 8:50 and I secured us tickets for the 12:15 ride. I got back, ate a little breakfast and we back to train-o-rama. A great time was had by all the boys and we got out of there as soon as we could. We grabbed lunch and then went to the Gap outlet, left there with a a giant bag of stuff. We started home and got stuck in a huge traffic jam took us 2 hours to go a mile.