{"id":911,"date":"2012-08-21T07:50:02","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T11:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/?p=911"},"modified":"2012-08-21T07:58:02","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T11:58:02","slug":"road-trippin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/?p=911","title":{"rendered":"Road Trippin’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This year we decided on a road trip for a family vacation.\u00c2\u00a0 Since we just got the new car we figured why not add 2,000 miles?!\u00c2\u00a0 We decided on three places- Hickory, North Carolina to visit Chris’ cousin’s family (we have never met 2 year old Samantha), Baltimore, Maryland to see the Red Sox at Camden Yards and Hershy, Pennsylvania because we love chocolate.\u00c2\u00a0 Each place would be a two night stay for a total of 7 days, 6 nights away.\u00c2\u00a0 Our longest trip away from home together.<\/p>\n

I took care of snacks, packing and itinerary.\u00c2\u00a0 Chris had a much more important job- entertainment.\u00c2\u00a0 He purchased Nook colors for both kids (and headphones!) and spent weeks loading videos (thanks Parisi’s!) on them.\u00c2\u00a0 There must be about 50 movies on them!!\u00c2\u00a0 Nana and Papa also gave the kids activity boxes just before we left. We were good to go!<\/p>\n

The drive to North Carolina was long- almost 15 hours!\u00c2\u00a0 About 2 hours in to the drive, Brendan got sick.\u00c2\u00a0 Lesson learned, don’t give a 5 year old a bag of chocolate donuts!\u00c2\u00a0 Otherwise with stops along the way, we did pretty well.\u00c2\u00a0 Lots of silence and even nap time!!\u00c2\u00a0 North Carolina is beautiful!\u00c2\u00a0 We loved seeing Ellee, Scott and Samantha.\u00c2\u00a0 We enjoyed feeding ducks, playing at a playground, mini golf and delicious food.\u00c2\u00a0 Samantha likes to be read to and Aidan likes to read.\u00c2\u00a0 She also like to say Brendan is silly!<\/p>\n

Next up was Baltimore.\u00c2\u00a0 A shorter drive (about 6 hours).\u00c2\u00a0 After getting to our hotel, we spent time in the pool.\u00c2\u00a0 The next day we went to the Baltimore Science Center.\u00c2\u00a0 It was awesome!!\u00c2\u00a0 Everything there was so cool!\u00c2\u00a0 The kids loved it!\u00c2\u00a0 Great exhibits, lots of hands on activities and experiments!\u00c2\u00a0 It was a great time.\u00c2\u00a0 And funny enough, lots of children with Red Sox shirts (including ours).\u00c2\u00a0 That night we went to the Sox game.\u00c2\u00a0 Camden Yards is great (and lots of empty seats!).\u00c2\u00a0 The kids lasted through the 6th inning (and when we left they were winning, but that changed).\u00c2\u00a0 It was a perfect summer night- popcorn, peanuts, pretzel and baseball.<\/p>\n

The ride to Hershey was shortest, about 2 hours.\u00c2\u00a0 We got on the road Thursday morning and were at Hershey when it opened.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a hot day!\u00c2\u00a0 The kids liked all the chocolate themed parts to the park.\u00c2\u00a0 Ultimately their favorite place was the water park and wave pool.\u00c2\u00a0 We went to the Chocolate Experience before leaving and got to learn (via tour ride) about how chocolate is made.\u00c2\u00a0 We then made our own chocolate!!<\/p>\n

The next day we went to the Hershey Museum.\u00c2\u00a0 This was another great museum.\u00c2\u00a0 The kids learned about the Mayans who first made chocolate.\u00c2\u00a0 They were apprentices and discovered lots of cool facts about Milton Hershey and we all got to go to a chocolate tasting!\u00c2\u00a0 And again made our own chocolate.\u00c2\u00a0 It was great!!<\/p>\n

Saturday we drove home- about 8 hours.\u00c2\u00a0 And this time it was Aidan who got sick, just before lunch (yuck!).\u00c2\u00a0 The ride home seemed long mostly because we hit New York traffic.\u00c2\u00a0 We made it home by late afternoon.\u00c2\u00a0 Then we were able to celebrate Chris’ birthday!<\/p>\n

It was a really fun trip- better than we expected!!\u00c2\u00a0 I was able to tweet parts of it (when I wasn’t driving too!)\u00c2\u00a0 All our pictures are on my facebook page!<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year we decided on a road trip for a family vacation.\u00c2\u00a0 Since we just got the new car we figured why not add 2,000 miles?!\u00c2\u00a0 We decided on three places- Hickory, North Carolina to visit Chris’ cousin’s family (we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":920,"href":"https:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions\/920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obriensr.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}