Charelston and the Citidel is the setting of some of my all time favorite books. I have had a love affair with this place all of my adult life but this is the first time I’ve had a chance to go. I LOVE it here. It is so beautiful and charming and rich with history. The shopping and food is incredible, the architecture (like Pittsburgh) makes me keep my camera in my hand at all times.I wish I had WAY more time here.

It rained for our entire drive to Charelston which sucked but then it cleared up once we got here. We did the lame tourist thing and ate at Bubba Gump’s but the food was REALLY good. Then we went to the waterfront and played on the peer, watched the dolphins, enjoyed the AWESOME weather (it was probably only 70) and enjoyed the sunset. It was really relaxing and enjoyable which was perfect because I hit some sort of “get me away from everyone, my family is draining me dry!” bad mood all day. So it snapped me out of it. The boys loved looking for and catching little tiny crabs and Addy just loved running around and jumping.

This morning we’re going to go do a tiny bit of window shopping and then grab some ice cream and head off for our next destination - FLORIDA! I can not wait to get there!!!!!!!!!! So today will be all driving, all day, and then settling in.

So after our ridiculously long drive the other day we passed out and in the morning pulled out a map and realized we had gone WAY out of the way. Hours. Thank you GPS with 2009 mapping software - you suck my ass. I could be dead on the side of a dark mountain right now thanks to you.

But we made it to Durham and we had a full day. This will be long, I’m sure! (more…)

It’s pitch black and we are on some crazy deep mountain single-lane narrow-bridge roads ostensibly on our way to North carolina. In an effort not to panic and wish I had a bottle of Xanax available, I’m blogging. Bonus to all this crazy deep woods driving: gas is only $3.45!

Yesterday morning I woke up and had a train of thought a little something like this:

- man, tomorrow is going to be a LONG and difficult day of driving. That is going to SUCK. I don’t drive well when I wake up early either.
- wait! I know! We can leave TONIGHT, knock out 4 hours while the kids sleep and then have a more reasonable day of driving tomorrow! Sweet! I’m a genius! Let’s pull up a map and see where to stay overnight tonight.
- oooh, looks like Pittsburgh might be a good stopping off point tonight. OMG I love Pittsburgh. And also didn’t the boys say something about a cool dinosaur being at the historical museum there? Let’s look!
- oh yeah baby! I know! Because we saved so many hours of driving by leaving tonight we’ll have plenty of time for a quick stop at the natural history museum. It’s decided!

So here we are. We should have been in our hotel by now but instead we won’t get in until midnight. 2 hours and 45 minutes to go.

Another funny thing? We walked into the museum and I was like “hrmm, this looks familiar!”. Sure enough it dawned on me right away that last time we were in Pittsburgh we went to this museum to see the traveling Lewis & Clark exhibit. That was like 4 years ago. I had no idea we had already seen all these dinosaurs! D’oh! Anyway the boys still enjoyed it, none of them remembered really going the first time. We took 100000 pictures of boring dinosaurs and that was that.

Let me interrupt myself to wax poetic (ha) about how much I love and adore Pittsburgh. It has always been in my top few favorite cities and this visit totally made it jump to number 1. I adore every single thing about that city. I love how its built on the side of this mountain split in half by a big ole body of water. I love how the streets are just insanity. I LOVE the museums and cultural stuff. I love love love the archeticture. It is the only city I’ve ever been in that I could easily see spending my days pushing my baby around in a stroller discovering on foot. I took a billion pictures of random things and felt more inspired photographically than I have EVER felt - and that was just the walk from the museum to the parking structure!!! There is just something about Pittsburgh that I adore more than words. If only they had a more liberal homeschoolnig policy.

Back to today. We decided since we already screwed our “get in by dinnertime” plans we may as well get a hot meal for lunch. We got the hot meal but also a side dish of Noah asking which foods would help his tooth come out fastest and then the inevitable lost tooth and blood-covered napkins that totally took my appetite away. Oh yes, friends, it was a double-xanax-wishing kind of day. All I can say is thank GOD that there will be a few months until the next two fall out to give me a chance to recover. If there is one thing that freaks me out more than teeth its when they are falling out of your head.

If you plan to travel with your still-rear-facing toddler any time soon and that toddler gets very bored let me give you a little hint. Two pillows brought along by other family members make an awesome “fort” around and over the top of the car seat! Addy totally loves her little bear cave “home” and when she’s really cranky and sick of the car it buys us an extra hour or so.

Seriously she’s a very good traveler. VERY good. Better than me, I think. She’s not afraid of impending death on a dark mountainside (where incidentally there are no cell signals). That helps. I really LOVE these massive road trips. My kids totally crack me up and I just feel so much closer to them after spending all this solid time together. I learn so much about them that gets lost in the busyness of life. I know I wrote something similar last summer but I totally forgot about it until today when I was thinking how happy these road trips make me.

Tomorrow I have some SUPER fun plans and it will just have to be a surprise. I totally can not wait.