We recently returned from our swing thru some mid-Atlantic states visiting friends and family. The trip was a lot of things, but what it wasn’t was #1 boring and #2 a vacation. We were on the go fairly often, staying in 3 different locations over a 5 night period.
We were leary of the car ride down since Quincy really likes to be able to move around. We got up very early on 9/20 and left the apartment right after Quincy had his breakfast. He did very well in the car because we had plenty of his toys and books and also because I moved his carseat to the middle – making it easy to hand him things and/or read him books. We made very good time and drove all the way to Camp Hill for our lunch stop.
Since we stopped right around 12PM, the restaurant was very crowded with people on their lunch hour. Fortunately, a place like Panera bread is able to move people thru very quickly. We each had a nice sandwich and Quincy enjoyed some of his food, but what he really like was Dara’s chicken sandwich. The chicken was of the rotisserie style, and he ate almost half of it.
After lunch, we took him into the adjacent Barnes & Noble for him to walk around work off some of his pent-up energy. In the children’s section, he picked up a little stuffed cat and started carrying it around. We decided to buy it after he began chewing on one of it’s ears. We named it Sundance and Grammie is not allowed near it (inside joke there). After sufficient exercising of his limbs, we piled back in the car and headed on down the road to Grammie’s place of work – AOC – Arthritis and Osteoporosis Center of Maryland.
The AOC has been a close follower of Quincy’s weekly pictures and all of his shenanigans. We got there and proceeded right down to the lab (where grammie works) and just stood in the doorway until she turned around and noticed him. Quincy was a big hit at the office. The people there had heard so much about him and were now getting to see him in person. He didn’t disappoint either. He was not very shy and was scampering up and down the hallways – especially to the lit up exit sign (he loves those). We stayed for maybe 15-20 minutes and then decided that it was time to get him up to see grampa in Rocky Ridge and then down for a nap.
Quincy was very happy to see grampa – so much so that he held off taking his nap for a little while. The usual highlight at their house is the cuckoo clock. Grampa would manual move the hands of the clock around to the hour and half-hour so as to make the bird pop out and “cuckoo”. So any time we would carry Quincy by that clock he would stretch out his arm and reach for it. Cute. The rest of the evening was dinner, some play time and then bed for the little guy. He had such a long first day, but he powered on thru it like a champ. The next day, Thursday, had several components to it.
After getting up and having breakfast, we (me, Dara, Quincy, and grampa) went to a nearby park that is near a covered bridge. The grass was still very wet from the overnight dew. We all got soaked feet, but Quincy had a good time just walking all over the place. Grampa then suggested that we take Quincy to the “big slide” in Rocky Ridge. Just what was this “big slide” we wondered.
Well, a local church has a very nice park type area complete with a pavilion area, picnic tables, etc., and, of course, the big slide. This slide is about 2.5 stories tall, covered, and very fast. The slide looks like the type of wood you see at a bowling alley, minus the wax – and some little humps on it as well. I grabbed my burlap sack (for speed) and trudged up the stairs. It looked high – and I hate heights. I sat on the sack and wondered, “How fast could this really go?” Wicked fast it turns out. Fast enough that I was really worried about the dismount at the end. The end is nothing more than a shallow pit of sawdust and the shards of broken bones from pervious sliders. I tried my best to “stick” the landing, but it was ugly. What was even uglier was watching grampa come flying down the slide also. I could just see myself trying to explain to grammie how he broke his legs in 6 places. Dara wouldn’t let me take Quincy down on my lap on the burlap (smart woman). I did, however, go down without the burlap and it was much, much slower. Due to the speed being so much less, Quincy was able to come down my lap a few times – he seemed to like it a lot. I asked Dara to take Quincy down on her lap so I could take a mini-movie (didn’t come out well – too dark), and she agreed, but wanted to take a test run by herself to see how fast she would go. I basically called her a wuss and told her she didn’t need to do that. How much faster could she go than me? Turns out, much faster. She and Quincy came down much faster than I did with him on my lap. She looked scared. He looked concerned, but I kept filming. 🙂 I did manage to stick my arm out at the end to try and slow them down. Needless to say, that was the end of the big slide. The video and/or the audio of that might make it up here sometime, but we’ll just have to see. By this time it was close to Quincy’s nap. We took him home because we had plans for after lunch – up to Gettysburg!
Gettysburg is much more than the battlefield. Wow, that was a hard sentence to write. But there really are other things to do there and the main one was seeing Pam – one of Dara’s college friends and a visiting assistant professor at Gettysburg College. Check out Pam’s page at the college (sorry Pam – well, no, not really). We had a nice visit with her in her office. She had to be there in case any hapless undergrads needed some help for the exam that was occuring that evening. Quincy did well – he walked around and played with Pam’s “Tower of Knowledge” aka Jenga. It was some time later that we realized that we may have left a sippy cup on her desk. Did we Pam? I’m not gonna say it was his favorite ’cause it wasn’t, but he did cry the rest of the afternoon. Okay, maybe not, maybe he didn’t even notice – that is closer to what happened. We then headed over to the outlets for some much needed shopping for Quincy.
The Gettysburg Village is nice. We knew that we had to hit them with surgical precision since time was not on our side (nap-wise). Our main stops were #1 Osh Gosh and #2 Children’s Place and, time permitting, #3 Baby Gap. We dropped the most coin at stop #1. I really like the clothes they have there. We stocked up on 18 month sized stuff and got a few more 12 month sized pants. We did have time for the other 2 stops as well and managed to get Quincy back to my parents house in time for a nap. We had Rocky’s pizza for supper. Nope, not kidding. The Rocks in Rocky Ridge who live on Rocky Ridge Road had Rocky’s pizza for supper. Sadly, there was no discount. We then had to pack up all our gear and then on over to Uniontown and to gramma’s apartment before Quincy’s bedtime.
We got there with time to spare, unloaded the stuff (common theme), and got Quincy bedded down for the evening. Later that evening, Ryan, Debbie, Isaac and Nathan arrived too. Thus far, I have neglected to mention that the original purpose for this trip down to MD was for a family gathering on the Saturday after we got there. So we just hung out that evening, talking, playing with old Star Wars toys and eating fresh made apple pie at 10 something that evening. The next day (Friday) was to be a day of exercise – for our stomachs. 😉
Quincy had been getting up early and by early, I mean before 6AM. Y’ouch. So we got up and had breakfast with him, joined shortly by gramma and Ryan. Once everybody was up, we ate again – the main breakfast – a very yummy breakfast casserole. We hung around enjoying the company and killing time before the next scrumptious meal. Lunch was a nice potato soup with open-faced sandwiches garnish. That food went down great too. Quincy held his own too during all of this – he ate every time we did and gained a few pounds in the process I think. The coup de gras was dinner – grilled delmonico steaks with a side of veggies topped off with s’mores by a fire in the backyard. I have to mention my nephew Isaac here. He had the most patience of anybody at the fire for toasting his marshmallows. He was on par to have the perfect ‘mallow in about 4 hours (he couldn’t hold it close to the fire). Talk about slow roasted flavor! His Uncle Steve, on the other hand, was content to stick his marshmallow into the fire, ignite it, let it burn itself out and then peel off the charred remains of the ‘mallow. Mmmm, mmmm good I tell ya. Quincy, though, missed all of this as it occured well past his bedtime. So, Friday was basically a day of food, fellowship, more food, and of course, Star Wars action figures. We all went to bed in anticipation of a long day the next day.
It is here that I shall break the narrative. I will write up the second half of the trip in the next day or so. Wow, this is a long post – I bet ya’ll feel like it was told in real time.