Home again, home again, jigetty jig

We're back from the epic trip to Pittsburgh. Let me tell you, my mom is a brave soul - 14 hours total in a car with three kids under age 5 and their stressed out mother... yikes. The kids did really well, honestly. Jack was a little angel, hardly heard from him the whole way.

On the way up, we drove scenic Route 30 through PA, past the Elephant Museum, Living Treasures Animal Park and the Land of the Little Horses. Some day, I swear I'm going to take week and drive on that road and stop at all of those places. There's also Idelwild and Storybook Forest, I mean, what more could a girl want, right? Mom did her best to entertain everyone, but she mostly entertained me by throwing stuff at the kids. In her defense, it's really the only way to get stuff to the girls when they're all they're all the way in the back. So they'd ask for some drink or something to eat and Mom would whip it at them and pray they caught it. This worked great until we were about 30 miles from Opa's, when Mom threw the last sippy of milk at Mags, and she dropped it. Tragedy. Anyone who knows Mags, knows that this was a disaster of epic proportions. She screamed about that damned sippy the rest of the way.

It was great to be in the city of Champions for the Pens win. I'm not really a hockey fan, but hey, who doesn't like to see their team win?

Jack had a little first birthday party at Beth's house with my Hoover family. It means a lot to me to have birthday's with my family, probably because we moved when I was young, and I didn't celebrate my birthday with them very much. He got lots of cute clothes and some great toys. Poor kid is probably getting tired of playing with dolls, so it's good that he finally has some trucks to push around.

The funniest thing that happened was when we went to South Park to meet my dad's sister, Alice. South Park is an enormous green space with tons of small playgrounds. Alice knew of a nice area to have a picnic, so we followed her there and set up all our food. Well... don't you know, the bathrooms were all locked and of course, Ellie and Maggie had to pee almost immediately after we arrived. So the girls learned to "camping pee" - drop trou and pee in the breeze. Maggie ezpecially thought it was the greatest thing in the world. She spent most of the rest of our lunch naked from the waist down, peeing. I'm going to have to watch that she doesn't start peeing in the back yard I think. She wanted to try pooping, but I told her that I wasn't equipped to deal with poop.

I wasn't with Ellie most of the time. She spent most of her weekend with my mom and my grandfather. I'm going to admit her to an inpatient detox so she can get off the Oreos and orange juice, not to mention the undiluted GoGo time. She was in her glory - anytime I came to the house, she'd tell me to leave and to take Maggie and Jack with me. She even went fishing with her Great-Uncles Boo and Cherry. (On a side note, everyone of the "adults" in this family have a goofy kid name - Mimi and Cherry, Gigi and Boo, GoGo and Uncle LiLo) All in all, she had a great trip and was really not in the way of wanting to come home.

But home we had to come and the drive home was a little less relaxed - Turnpike the whole way. About 2 minutes after we pulled out of my grandfather's driveway, the DVD player gave up the ghost. So there was a detour to Target, where a new and improved DVD player was purchased, thanks Mom for the kids' birthday present. Of course, I got a chatty Target guy who wanted to talk features with me and I had to cut him off saying "my kids are in the car with my mom and we're on the road, now... just give me this one!" By Lancaster, PA, the kids were toast and Ellie and Maggie disolved into screaming at each other for fun and I actually had to stop the car and take Ellie out onto the curb and threaten her with leaving her behind. I asked her if she wanted to stay on the curb and she said "No" and then I asked if she wanted me to tie her car seat to the roof rack, and she said, "will it be fun up there?"

Finally we arrived home and picked up our $5 pizza, where of course I ran into Noel, like I always do on Tuesday nights at Valle, and then I threw the kids at Jeff and went out for an hour, by myself!! Hooray! Of course, where did I go? Babies R Us... kids are a sickness!!!!