Thursday, February 2, 2012

East Coast road trip, Part 2

I’m finally finishing our Christmas travel recap! I wrote here about Christmas in NC, here about Eleanor’s bday in NC, and here about our first road trip stop in NJ. On New Year’s Eve, after a fond farewell to my NJ relatives, we headed south for an afternoon at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden with Andrea and Erik and their precious little boys.

In this pic, Luke and I are silhouetted against a big tank. Faintly, you can make out the hulking mass of….

A hippo!! They were so agile and huge, just exhilarating to watch.

But most amazing were the numerous touch tanks. So exciting! (Especially when I had to moderate Luke’s not-always-gentle-enough touchingSmile) When we visited our aquarium last week, I enjoyed reminding Luke that we’d touched many of the animals before.

Below, Luke and C happily munch apples with an obliging turtle statue. What a great time we all had. If only we could join them for aquarium trips more often!

Then we drove up to Princeton, headed to a lovely New Year’s party. We usually spend New Year’s with family, and so I don’t think I’ve gone out to a New Year’s party since college! I’m not sure this officially counts, since we did leave with our sleepy pair before 10 pm, but seeing old friends, meeting little Miss Eliana, and Aime and Greg’s warm hospitality made it a perfect evening even with our early departure.

We were blessed to be back at Westerly Road Church the next morning. How things have changed since the Sunday mornings when I would run out of my dorm to catch the vans from the U-Store! Now there are baby bags to carry and two little people to drop off! It was wonderful to worship there once again and hear a terrific message from Pastor John about God’s calling for parents to raise children for the Lord, not just for ourselves (Luke 2:41-52).

Then we spent a relaxing afternoon with John, Lucy, and little Miss Anna. It was so much fun to catch up with them, see all the work they’ve done on their lovely home, and have other dear friends stop by!

We finished Sunday with a fabulous dinner with Hilary and Steven and little Mr. Philip. The spread easily topped every other breakfast-dinner I have ever been served, and the conversation was wonderful as always. Plus (when Luke finally fell asleep) we played a few rounds of Dominion, a board game we’ve all come to enjoy recently. Luke appreciated his and Phil’s shared toy preferences – anything with wheels! (:

We were so warmly welcomed – despite our last-minute plans and over-tired, vacation-worn children! What a blessing to get to catch up with so many wonderful friends in one place.

You might think that we’d be wise enough to stop there and fly home after so much schedule-disruption for Luke and Ellabelle. We considered it, but we couldn’t miss out on another visit with Auntie C! So Monday morning we drove down for a little more Auntie bonding, this time at the Air and Space Museum. Colleen surprised us by bringing her nice friend Ryan along, who was a hit with Luke and Eleanor. Luke also loved being surrounded by air and space craft

and was especially thrilled by the ones you can walk onto.

But the even bigger thrill was the vehicle you can walk onto that also moves fast – the metro of course! Luke was awestruck by the gust of wind as it zoomed by, the automatic doors, and the jolting ride. Here’s our crew, waiting on the platform (minus Erik, the cameraman).

After dinner and a sad farewell (“Luke want stay at Auntie C’s place!”  was the refrain for our car ride’s first hour) we drove back down to my parents’ house. What a wonderful whirlwind of visits to start off 2012!

3 comments :

  1. Aw, I'm sorry we didn't see you during this trip! We love the Adventure Aquarium too!

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  2. I wish we could have seen you guys too, hopefully next time! I remember Grace writing about the aquarium and thought of you both while we were there.

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  3. In Budapest you can touch the hippos at the zoo!

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