Vacation post-mortem

We're back from our trip and I'm happy to report that it was a great time with minimal confusion/tantrums/blowouts. We ended up leaving around 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, stopping off at Jekyll Island for the sea turtle center, a playground, and a gorgeous driftwood beach. If you haven't ever been to Jekyll, you should go. It's awesome. After Jekyll, we drove as far as Florence, SC where we stopped for the night. Jason took Nathan swimming in the hotel pool, so he now associates hotels with pools. He thought it was super awesome that he got his own big bed and he marveled at the "giant room." We were a little nervous about him peeing out of his diaper at night but we just reminded him over and over not to pee in his sleep.

On day two, we drove north to Greensboro, NC where we visited a fun (though a little pricey) children's museum. When I first walked in I was underwhelmed, but then I realized that we were just looking at a small corner of the space. They were also having a visiting Curious George exhibit, so that made for even more fun stuff. Nathan LOVED it. After that, we drove around Greensboro for a bit and then headed to our hotel.

Day three we headed back south a bit to the NCZoo, which was HUGE (I believe it's 5 miles of walking). It covers just two continents, North America and Africa, but is incredibly comprehensive with good animals and impressive habitats. The polar bear exhibit was closed because the zoo is building a 13 million dollar habitat upgrade, so that should give you an idea of the caliber. A lot of the habitats have multi-level viewing where you can look from above and then also go down to eye-level and view the animals through a window that's either half or fully under the water. They have a giant beehive, a sort of desert solarium, and they're opening a new kid zone in 2013 that looks pretty expansive. I also liked that in North America all of the animal loops were off the main path so that you could skip any of them without having to weave in and out. Africa was not as sequential.

When we first arrived, we asked to purchase the combo passes that included a carousel ride and a ticket to feed the giraffes, but they told us that the giraffes weren't out due to the rain earlier in the morning. Nathan loves to see giraffes and that was pretty much all he talked about, so we hoped they'd put the giraffes back out if it stayed sunny. The giraffes were the farthest animal in the entire park, and we didn't want a tantrum, so we just nodded and said "uh-huh" whenever giraffes were mentioned. We stopped at the halfway point and rode a pretty cool animal carousel (Nathan rode an alligator, shocking I know). We saw grizzly bears, alligators, a whole room full of reptiles and amphibians, seals, and much more.

Unfortunately, when we finally made it to the giraffes (and Nathan was fighting sleep just to stay awake until giraffe time), they were still in their barn. Apparently they are at high risk for falls when it's slippery. Jason told him the giraffes were sleeping, so Nathan tried to yell at them to wake up. We felt so bad. Jason explained the situation and he sadly said that he understood. Then, he went to sleep. At this point, we had to walk the whole way back to the car, so we were glad that it was with a passed out boy and not a screaming upset one. What bad luck for us, we ran into a rainstorm about halfway back to the car and got totally soaked.

From there, we drove up to Virginia to my brother's house in Roanoke. We stayed there for a few days (Jason's brother, his wife, and their baby also came to Jesse's) until we completely wore my brother out :) We sightsaw (sightseed? are either of those real words?) in downtown Roanoke and went to a beautiful state park that had a brand new ranger building with nice bathrooms (you may think it's weird that I mention this, but it was REALLY nice, and when was the last time you ever were in a nice state park bathroom?).

We left Roanoke Sunday morning and made the requisite stop at Trader Joe's (first time ever for Noah!) before stopping in Columbia for the night, where Nathan once again got to go in the pool. The next day was a long driving day, primarily because it felt like we were stopping constantly for someone to eat, go to the bathroom, etc. and also because we made a poor decision to explore Savannah, not realizing it was 20 minutes off of the highway.

Surprises/Lessons Learned
One thing I didn't expect was for Nathan to get homesick. The first night in Virginia, he was laying in his bed, and his eyes were shiny with tears. When I asked him what was wrong, he sadly said "I want to go to my house and sleep in my bed." :(

I also didn't expect returning home to be so tough. While we were gone, there was no "school" time, schedules were way off, with him staying awake as late as 11 p.m. some nights. He's had trouble focusing, though after almost a week home I would say he's about back to normal.

As far as what worked for diversions and what worked logistically, breaking up the drive with interim destinations was definitely helpful. The "superprize" bag was popular, and the item he played with most during the whole trip was probably his Wheels on the Bus book, followed by stickers + a blank composition book.

My packing system worked out pretty well, I always knew where diaper change or overnight essentials were, and they were always packed together in their bin. Thankfully, we were able to do laundry at my brother's house- I don't know that we could do a vacation with no laundry access.

Pics are up on my picasa page!