Easter Surprise

Todd and I had been dying to get away, so we started looking into places we could go for a weekend...The problem we kept running into is this: It is cold in the New York/Pennsylvania until at least May, so anything that it is an outdoor activity doesn't open until after Memorial Day (unless you want to go skiing) and there really isn't much to do inside that would appeal to the whole family. We thought of Splash Lagoon, an indoor water park in Erie, PA, but knew that was more than we really wanted to spend. But we were getting desperate, so we took a look at the website. We discovered that they were running a special, making it more in our price range, but the only weekend that the special and our calender lined up was Easter.


We decided to surprise the kids with a trip to Splash Lagoon for Easter. I got everything all packed while Jacob was at his sperm donor's (or father, if you want to call him that) house. Then, Sunday morning we did the Easter thing - baskets, Easter story, egg hunt.



Each of the kids got something besides candy in their basket (in part because they didn't get much candy). Jacob was really excited about the Buzz Lightyear sweatshirt that he got. I think that Cadence's favorite part was the baskets themselves, and as you can see, Gabriel was excited about the Peeps (yuck).


Yes, we did an egg hunt in the snow. It was a short one! If you look carefully, you can see the snowflakes coming down in the picture.








The egg hunt led the kids into the van, where I told them to sit down and buckle up. Jacob figured out that we were going on a trip because he saw the suitcase in the back of the van, but he thought we were going camping. (Funny side note, every time we go camping, the weather is horrible, and when our neighbor noticed that our van was gone she said "They must be camping, it always snows when they go camping") And then we stopped at Dunkin Donuts for breakfast on the go. Cadence enjoyed it....


It was a four hour drive, and the thing we were most worried about was Little Miss Potty Trained. She has been doing great, but would we have to stop every hour? Would she not give us enough notice when she had to go? Should we just put a diaper on her to be safe? Well, no worries! She was great! She didn't have any accidents the whole vacation, and when we told her to hold for a little while, she did.

About two hours into the drive, Gabriel realized that we weren't going to church. This upset him because he loves his schedules. He's getting the hang of the days of the week in order, and he knows that certain things happen certain days. Saturday and Sunday "Daddy has no work", Thursday is grocery shopping, Tuesday is small group, Sunday is church. So he couldn't understand why it was Sunday and we were not going to church. Todd explained to him that we were having a special family time, and he eventually got over it.

Stay tuned for pictures of Splash Lagoon.