Fall Road Trip- NJ and NC

We are taking quite a road trip adventure this fall! Gabe and I are attending the national AAP conference again and this time it is in Orlando, FL. Gabe flies down to meet us there on November 1st, but the kids and I are driving down and left at 6am on Friday.  Our first day we drove a long 9 hours to reach Medford, NJ. Hopefully this will be our longest stretch, but we are staying with friends for two nights, so it should break up the trip a bit.

Noah has been upgraded to co-pilot status after I realized that I couldn't hand things out, attend to everyone's needs, change the audiobooks, and drive while using my phone for navigation by myself.  Noah is far from an expert on map reading on a phone (I immediately regretted forgetting to stop at AAA for those paper maps!), but he is leaning and we only ended up in a mall parking lot once;)  I am sure he will be an expert by the end of the trip. 

We arrived early enough in the afternoon to play/visit, take on a corn maze, and have a fantastic dinner.  And that was just the first night!  On Saturday we got a surprisingly early start and hit Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market for their Halloween trick or treating event. The kids are quite a hodge poge this year for their costume selection. Noah- Ruth Bader Ginsburg, James- bowling ball, Ben- the Tin Man, and Audrey- a bowling pin. 

We had sideways rain in the morning, but by the time we were done with the Halloween festivities, it had calmed to a light drizzle. Our next stop was the Franklin Institute, a science museum around the corner from the Philadelphia Art Museum. We could have spent several days here and still not seen everything!  We took a break for pizza for lunch and went back to see a few more exhibits before heading back to NJ for dinner.

 Just to make sure we did as much as possible on a dreary day, the kids and I had our first escape room experience. We all had so much fun! In the scenario the prime minister contracted a virus and we had to find the antidote by solving a series of puzzles.  We did solve it puzzle with a few minutes to spare, but it was not without clues and it was definitely exciting!  Now we are hooked and can't wait to do another:)

This morning we left NJ and burned through New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and (finally) North Carolina. We arrived in Kill Devil Hills late in the afternoon and checked into our hotel. It was a bit too late (and we were all way too hungry) to visit the Wright Brothers National Monument today, but that will be on our list for first thing in the morning. Tonight we had dinner at one of the only non-seafood restaurants that is open on a Sunday nearby our hotel.  On the way in the kids spotted a mini golf course, so we topped the night off with a rousing round of mini golf. Before you could start the course they drove you in some type of mine train car to the starting spot.  It was exciting and we are all exhausted so I am sure we will all pay for the fun in the morning :)

PB & J Count: 6 (the kids are excited about peanut butter again;)

Fall Misc.

It is the end of October and we forgot about our carrots.  We are leaving on our trip this week so we thought we should probably dig them up before we left.  Honestly, it has been so warm this fall that I didn't worry about them freezing. We presumed that we wouldn't get much of a crop this year because  we planted them so late, but we were mistaken.  This may be the largest crop of carrots to date.  James is our expert gardener so this is a pretty happy face.

This fall Ben, Audrey, and James have all been playing soccer and loving it.  Noah decided to skip soccer this year and instead join the middle school cross country team.  All of the kids have loved being active this fall and we are so proud of the progress they have made! At the beginning of October Audrey's soccer finished, but her basketball also started.  She has been waiting to play these "official" sports for so long and this year she is finally old enough!

This past weekend we ran in the annual Fit Girls 5K in downtown Wilton.  The original plan was that Noah would run solo and I would run with James since he hadn't trained a whole lot for this race.  When we got to the race that morning Audrey saw all of the other girls running and REALLY wanted to run too.  I tried to talk her out of it because she has never run more than 2 miles (and she is 5yo), but she was clearly determined that she was going to run it with or without a number.  So, Noah and James both ran solo and did an amazing job on their own. Audrey and I ran together and her persistence never wavered. She made it the entire way without complaint and finished 61st out of 134 participants. Needless to say she is proud of herself and immediately hung her ribbon on her wall. 

MDI Half Marathon

Noah set a goal after last year's Millinocket Marathon that he would earn his own Sea to Summit medal. This medal is awarded to those who complete either the marathon or half in both the MDI marathon and the Millinocket Marathon in the same calendar year. Well, we can now say that we have completed that first half of that goal.

We had absolutely perfect running conditions!  Noah took off running and never looked back. There were times when I thought for sure we wouldn't make it because he was running faster than our goal pace, but he never let up.  There were certainly parts during the last few miles that were a struggle, but we finished and felt awesome about it!  Our goal was somewhere around 2:10, but we finished 1:58 AND Noah won 3rd place for his age group (under 19)!

While on MDI we had a great AirBnB rental for a few nights so we were also able to get in some exploring and relaxing after the race.  James got to get his official 4th grader national park pass, we visited the park loop road, and explored some tide pools.  The weather was gorgeous for this time of year.  One the way home we visited Maine's Fort Knox.  The kids thought this was the best thing ever. The fort was actually decorated for Fright Night at the Fort so the Stephen King themed decorations added an interesting component.  They explored every inch of that place and would have stayed longer if it hadn't started to rain.  They are becoming pretty knowledgeable about different types of wartime artillery. This was all while visiting a fort that never saw any wartime action.  I can't wait to see how they react to exploring Fort Sumter and some other spots during our upcoming road trip.

Mt. Washington Cog Railway

Today was definitely not a blue bird day on the top of Mount Washington. In fact, the ceiling was low and it felt a lot like a frigid winter day at the summit. When we reached the top they actually decided to close the auto road because it was so icy.  Luckily we took the Cog Railway.  Despite the frigid temperatures, the rain, ice, and fog, we still had a great time riding the train and learning some cool history about the mountain.