Thanksgiving 2011: To Point B from Point A in Beautiful PA!

Kind of a long title, don'tcha think?  


Yup, but I wanted it to rhyme.  ;-)


Here are the previous installments of our Thanksgiving adventure:  Part One...Part Two...Part Three...Part Four...Part Five.

So...where were we?  Oh, yes, Jeff had finished his hillside exploration of a cave and had climbed back into the van, and off we went from my grandparents' former farm to my brothers' current house.  The only picture I have from this segment of the trip is this one...

...taken by Tobin as his puppy dog reclined on my arm.  Let me say a word about that puppy:  it was kindly given to Tobin by our friend Jenny Sacra months (years?) ago when we were visiting at their house one evening and she saw how much Tobin liked the dog.  It is so soft and cuddly--no wonder he expressed so much interest in it!  But to myself, I wondered if he would lose interest quickly and if it would become just another stuffed animal sitting around cluttering up his room.  Not so.  He has continued to love that thing and, during these past few weeks, has been particularly drawn to it.  None of our other boys has ever had such a strong pull to a "lovey," but Tobin does with this puppy.  He carries it around with him, plays with it, gives it rides in his tricycle, uses an old pillowcase from the rag pile to be a carrier for it, absconds a belt from Josiah's closet to use as a leash around this puppy's neck, and, as you can tell from the picture, decided that it needed to go along on our Thanksgiving trip.   Oh, and he named it Molly, which is the name of our real dog, the only one of our three that we still have (we gave Buddy away, and Jasper got hit and killed in the road).  Tobin and Molly are very sweet together.  :)

Anyway, as I was saying, we left the Cove and headed north...and then...well...I fell asleep.  I'm pretty sure that the four of us in the back two seats of the van (that would be Josiah, David, Tobin, and me) all took a nap as we rolled merrily along.  Whenever I get to nap is a merry time indeed.  :)  

With Jeff, our skillful driver, and Dad, our ever-present co-pilot, at the helm, we arrived safely at my brother David's house and enjoyed a wonderfully relaxing evening of adults-conversing, cousins-playing, pizzas-being-eaten, and lots of sitting-around-the-table-just-enjoying-the-time-together.  It was perfect.

With 9:00 PM approaching, Jeff and I and our boys left my parents at my brothers' house to spend the night, and we went to the hotel where we had a reservation.  It was a step up from the place in which we stayed last year; and best of all, we had made adequate preparations to make sure that NO CHILD SLEPT IN BED WITH US!  It's the little things, you know, that make all the difference.  ;-)  

Last year, Shav had slept in the playpen and Tobin in bed with us.  I'm pretty sure Tobin was the only one who got much sleep in our bed that night because, boy, is that child a helicopter in motion when he sleeps!  This year, we reserved a crib from the hotel, and Shav slept in that; then Tobin got to be in the playpen we took along.  It was much, much better.  :)

It still wasn't the easiest thing to get all four boys settled down, all sharing a room like that.  I think especially because of Tobin's late nap in the van, he found it hard to go to sleep.  If I remember right, we turned the lights out around 9:30 PM; and, although I didn't stay awake this whole time but dozed off from time to time, Tobin was still making some noise an hour later.  It seems that by about 10:30 or so, everyone was quiet--not bad for the night before Thanksgiving in a hotel three states from home!  :)