Our Family Trip Part I: Getting There and Longwood Gardens

I would call it a vacation since we left home and sought out fun and interesting destinations. But in my mind a vacation should also involve some leisure relaxing, and that was in short supply. As it was the trip oscillated from pure torturous misery of trying to get our children to sleep without destroying the hotel room to a few minutes of occasional blissful family enjoyment.

Our trip's planned itinerary was to leave Thurs AM and arrive at Longwood Gardens in SE Pennsylvania just before noon and enjoy touring the grounds for several hours before driving down to New Castle, DE on the Delaware River for a night's stay with our free hotel points and swim with the kids in the hotel pool. The next morning we'd drive the 1.5 hrs to Lancaster PA where Matt would take the kids to a children's museum while I would have some free time to explore yarn shops, quilt shops, markets, etc. After another night's stay using our free hotel points we'd then explore the Amish countryside and markets before heading home on Saturday.

Longwood Gardens

Reality didn't play out quite so smoothly of course. I stayed out late on Wednesday night watching the new Harry Potter movie with some friends : D and so the departure didn't happen until close to noon. Evalyn was very impatient and all she wanted to do was get to the hotel so she could swim. As we drove northeast along 95 assuming our children would nap along the way it was very apparent that they were both coming down with a virus of some sort. Evalyn refused to swallow anything and was drooling all over the place while crying and trying to fall asleep. This woke up Henry who was tired and also uncomfortable. We stopped halfway to our destination to comfort our miserable children only to discover that Evalyn had wet her carseat but not told us!! After trying to force down some Tylenol and feed them a late lunch without much success we seriously contemplated turning around and calling the whole thing off.

We persevered though and opted to ditch the Gardens for the day and head straight for the hotel and see if swimming and sleep improved the situation. The pool was fun for everyone. Henry was a little timid at first but liked splashing and bobbing while being held. Evalyn loved it of course, even tried jumping in before Mommy or Daddy was ready to catch her! We went out to dinner and decided for early bedtime for the kids in hopes of having a little down time for us. It took over an hour to get Henry to sleep in the pack n pay. This was after pacing and rocking him to sleep since any attempt of laying him in the crib caused him to stand up and try climbing out. We also tuned the clock radio to loud static to lessen the distracting noises. Finally by 9:30 both kids were sleeping in our now very dark hotel room. It took so much effort to get them down that we didn't want to risk any lights or sounds for a movie or reading. I kept thinking, when is going out of town and staying in a hotel a fun family thing to do and not a maddening torturous event?


The next morning everyone seemed to be feeling better. After a breakfast at IHOP we drove the short hour or so through the Brandywine Valley to Longwood Gardens arriving just after they opened. It was a gorgeous day with a cool light breeze. We started with the Topiary Gardens and fountains, walked by the waterfall and carillon clock tower then headed to the Children's and Idea Gardens. These were fabulous. Each section (perennial, herb, vines, vegetable, ground covers, etc) were designed to teach and show how to use the different plantings in your own garden. There was even a complete "Example Garden" of how to incorporate it all into a sample suburban yard, front and back, complete with a tool shed and green house. Quite inspiring.

Next we strolled by the Pierce-DuPont house, admired some huge trees, took in the vibrant colors of the Flower Garden Walk, and called it good. My pregnant body was flagging and the kids were ready for lunch and naps. It was a great morning, we were both glad that it ended up being a morning tour rather than an afternoon one. I wished I'd had the energy to walk through the conservatory and over to the lake areas. Hopefully we can come back in the fall and enjoy the gardens in that season, too. I was amazed at the simple elegant beauty of it all.

As we drove to Lancaster we realized we didn't have any addresses for our destinations of choice so we'd need to find the Visitor's Center to get a better map and directions. This involved tedious sign following with now waking children but we finally made it and fate was with us: two of our destinations were right next to eachother. I dropped Daddy and the kids off at the Hands-On House before heading to Knitnit Needlecraft Shop. My brain was a little fatigued from all the turmoil of direction finding. All I really wanted to do was nap in a cool dark room or sit in a very large comfy chair and read or knit. But we didn't drive all this way for THAT! So I browsed the yarn, looked through some patterns but didn't find anything too inspiring except some nice gray sock yarn. (wink to Kellie) Oh, and some sweet little buttons for the baby sweater I'm about halfway through. I was hoping to stumble across some quaint locally died handspun yarn to make a shawl out of that had a little story with it. Alas, I should've done some more research to actually find if a place like that existed!

The kids had a blast at the Hands-on House and I almost wished I'd done that instead. I love well designed kids museums. We drove to the hotel and Matt and Evalyn went swimming while Henry and I got take-out pizza. We started in with bedtime around 7 but an hour or so later Henry was still fighting it and I was in meltdown mode myself with exhaustion and frustration. Daddy to the rescue while I took a long rejuvenating bath before jumping back in. Henry was still resisting so Matt took him for a drive hoping for the fall asleep in the car trick while I laid down with Evalyn. When they got back 40 minutes later, she'd just fallen asleep but Henry was STILL awake. Another hour almost of pacing, rocking and radio static before he FINALLY stayed asleep. It was 10:30. To create some semblance of leisure we sat at the kitchenette with the bathroom door cracked and my headlamp on as we ate ice cream and browsed brochures planning our stroll through Amish country the next morning. Then we fell exhausted into bed.