Pennsylvania Trip

For Aaron's Spring Break, we decided to take a short trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. We rented a van with some friends (Marco and his mom) and headed off first thing Tuesday morning. We planned the trip so that we would stay overnight in Gettysburg, stopping in Hershey on the way and Lancaster on the way back.

First stop was the chocolate tour in Hershey:


The kids got to pretend to be factory workers and box up some Hershey's kisses.

Honestly, I was a little disturbed by the whole Hershey experience. Probably the biggest reasons are the commercialism and unhealthiness of the whole thing. Kids don't need any convincing to eat chocolate. It was interesting to see how the chocolate is made, but I could have done without all the advertising and ignoring the issues of slave labor, etc. Anyway, we enjoyed our hour or so in Hershey and had some good conversations about it afterward. So it was fine overall I'd say.

We driove the rest of the way to Gettysburg and arrived there late afternoon. Ben took the boys to the hotel pool while Karina and I went to the outlets (which happened to practically share a parking lot with our hotel). Elliot's favorite part about the trip was the hotel, of course. The day after we got home he kept asking to go back to the place with the beds and the pool.

The next morning we headed off to the new visitors' center they have in Gettysburg now. 

Elliot tackling/hugging Abraham Lincoln in front of the visitors' center. There was a plaque there that quoted the Gettysburg Address. I got on a pedestal and started yelling out the first few lines as a dramatic attempt to get them to care about it. The kids were fascinated and wanted me to do it again, but the surrounding adults were more on the side of mortified.

Aaron and friend Marco

Reenacting the battle, from the high ground perspective of the Union soldiers

Elliot enjoyed running around and trying to get the bad guys, but he was a little confused about what, exactly, "Gettysburg" is. Before we got there, he kept saying things like, "I'm gonna punch Gettysburg!" No matter how we tried to explain that Gettysburg is a place, not a person, he still seemed quite disappointed when we arrived and he said, "THIS is Gettysburg??" 

Libbie's favorite toy was Karina's cell phone.

All sleeping on the way home, after the feast at Shady Maple in Lancaster.

Backposting

The last few months as I have been delinquent with posting, I have periodically started drafts and not completed them. Today I went through and finished them, keeping the original date. Here are links to the posts if you'd like to check them out:

"Lost"

"Aaron"

"Libbie"

(You can also just scroll down...)