I'm back, I'm back, I'm back...
50 some hours away from my beloved world o' blogging and I feel weeks behind. Egad.
First, a big smooch to Ampersand at Alas and the Bohemian Mama herself for linking to my Head Start post and sending some folks my way.
On Tuesday morning, TLG and I packed up the car and hit the road heading NW toward Cleveland to visit my sister and her kids. It's about a 6.5 hour car ride if you just get in and do it. However, when you travel with an almost-4 yr old it takes a little longer. Door-to-door: 9 hours. However, that did include: 20 min trip to local food coop for healthy snacks, 40 min pit-stop at Border's Books to use the restroom and buy "Little Bear's Friend" and "Cow on the Track" on tape, an hour lunch at a McDonalds with one of those playgrounds, and other misc. bathroom breaks.
We were going to stay 3 or 4 days. We were there about 18 hours when my brother-in-law came home from the doctor's with a diagnosis of mumps. Yes, mumps. Now this was a bit of a crisis because the MMR [and varicella] are the only vaccines that TLG has not yet received. So a quick call to our pediatrician and a quick call to TBG and we decided it would be best not to stay. Not even 24 hours after we arrived, we packed up the car again and hit the road home. This time however, I decided to split up the trip. I drove 3 hours and got a room at a Holiday Inn that had an indoor pool. TLG guy and I went swimming, caught dinner at Bob Evans [I am getting too old for road trip food] and then watched Animal Planet until we fell asleep. Took it easy in the am. Swam again. Breakfast at Denny's. Then back on the road. What should have taken us another 3 hours, however, took 7. Yes, seven. And I can't even blame it on TLG. I just decided to take more "scenic" routes and meandered all over SW PA to get home. And we stopped at "Living Treasures Animal Park" in Donegal, PA. Which would have been fun except that when I finally got TLG comfortable enough to risk feeding the animals [he watched me feed deer, goats, antelope, sheep, camels, Llama, and even emu] we were at the donkeys. One of whom promptly bit him. Hard. On his little pinky finger. It was really not pretty. Broke the skin and everything. Not really bloody, but the tooth mark was pretty grim until it faded.
Anyway, we are home again now and I have a ton of blog reading I want to do. [Did I mention that I have almost 6 dozen blogs bookmarked that I try to check in with each day?] I want to get back to HeadStart too ... Everything in time...
[By the way, my sister called me after I had already passed the half-way mark on the PA turnpike to tell me that they got a second opinion today. It was not mumps but a serious bacterial infection. They pumped him with antibiotics and sent him home.]
9:01:12 PM 
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