Pennsylvania 2008

We're back from our great Pennsylvanian roadtrip of 2008. Mark was scheduled to give a talk at Penn State. And since the girls were on springbreak from preschool, we decided to take everybody along. It was a chance to visit our friends Matt and Maureen who are now faculty in the Happy Valley.


The girls were thrilled to go on vacation. They love to travel. For them, a roadtrip means getting to watch TV and eat chips in the car. (things they're not normally allowed to do). And to stay in a hotel and go swimming. All good things from their perspective. Here they are snuggled into their hotel bed. (L,E) You can see they brought all the essentials from home---Lambie, Duckie, Bunny, Big Bear. I constrained them to one backpack of toys each. They didn't think at all about packing pants, socks, underpants, etc. So funny. They were disgruntled to make room in their suitcase for such things.


Unfortunately, the second morning of our trip Elsa woke up with a 102F fever and a barking cough. Poor girl. This will go on record as the academic year that kicked our butts. Everyone has been nearly constantly sick starting with the Croup in October. We've had all kinds of flu, cough, pneumonia, sinus infections and strange rashes. Combined with Mark making 6 multiple day business trips, me starting a new job and the girls missing a lot of school, I can't believe we've survived. So glad that Winter is finally over and Spring is here. Thank goodness. I'm hoping the girls immunities will be better next year. They say the first year of school/daycare is always the roughest. And in the Fall, I have them signed up for school's lunch program. So, it will be much less running around for all of us.

Elsa was quite the trooper, though. With a heavy dose of motrin, we motored on the Chocolate World in Hershey, PA.


Hershey is an interesting place. We stayed at the Hershey Lodge where you receive chocolate bars at check-in. The room was decorated in a Hersey Kisses motif on the wallpaper and on the linens. There was even a hot chocolate maker in our room.

Anyway, Hersey World was a good place to bring little kids. We went on "Small World" style tour of a replica factory complete with singing cows. Kind of like in Charlie and the Chocolate factory, we rode in this little car on a conveyor belt and learned how chocolate is made. They put a lot of thought into the ride and it was full sensory. The room got warmer in the roasting room and it smelled like chocolate in the mixing room. The girls thought it was pretty cool.


Then, they got to work the conveyor belt Lucy and Ethel style in the choclate kisses packaging room.


Here they are sending their candy on to packaging.

Then, we drove on to State College, Pa. Unfortunately, this was the part of the trip where I started getting sick, too. Elsa's cough was worse, so the girls and I spent a lot of time at the Ramada while Mark was on campus talking science. Lily was pretty happy with the deal because she got to lay in bed, eat chips and watch TV. The girls and I did get to drive around campus a bit and had icecream at their famous creamery. And we also had a couple nice dinners with Matt and Mo. Hopefully, we didn't leave any germs behind.

So, despite the sickness, it was still a good trip. And nice for us to get out of the daily grind for a few days.