So long, New England!

This morning we checked out of the resort at 8:50 am, and we arrived home at 9:00 pm. It's not a 12 hour drive between here and Cape Cod. We stopped for gas once, for dinner once, and also spent two hours each at two museums. I had hoped to be home between 8:00-8:30, but the last leg (from Bridgeport, CT to home) took longer than anticipated. Leaving a time share resort is a little more time consuming than leaving your average hotel room because it involves things like loading up the dishwasher, taking the garbage and recycling to their respective dumpsters, and in my case this morning waiting for the last load of laundry to dry in the dryer. However considering we paid $179 for a two bedroom townhouse for a week, I am not complaining. Housekeeping doesn't come in to the resort during your stay at most time share resorts in the US (but the opposite is true in time share resorts in other countries). We saved a lot of money by packing lunches every day and eating breakfast in our unit every morning, and eating carry-out pizza in our unit two nights also helped save some money.

Our first stretch was just 75 minutes long as we only drove to Providence, Rhode Island. We spent two hours at the Providence Children's Museum. I took pictures, but I haven't uploaded them yet so the pictures in this post are from earlier in the trip. We ate lunch at a picnic table in the playground part of the museum. Our next drive was a little over two hours to Bridgeport, CT where we spent two hours in the Discovery Museum. We saw a planetarium show about the night sky at 3:00. The last stretch was supposed to take 3 hr 40 minutes, but it ended up taking 4 hr 30 minutes including a stop for dinner at Dunkin Donuts. The kids enjoyed both museums. At the first one they only allow 3 in for free with the ASTC membership, but at the second one they let all five of us in for free (and the planetarium shows didn't involve any extra costs there). So we spent $18 total for the five of us to go to two museums and see a planetarium show, and we didn't have to pay for parking in either place.


Altogether the drive went pretty smoothly. There were of course some moments when the kids weren't being very nice to each other or got fussy about something or other (example wanted dinner earlier than we ate it tonight), but Oliver took a nap after the first museum and slept the last hour of the drive so that helped a lot. He never had a full temper tantrum which was a big step in the right direction as he's not a fan of long car rides. He kept saying he really wanted to ride his bike, ha ha. The kids watched one movie on the dvd player, played on the iPad a little, and listened to stories on CD. We finished The Long Winter (which takes 7 1/2 hours to listen to the whole thing) and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. While Nadia was playing at the one museum Paul asked what she was cooking, and she said "salt pork." HA HA! She has never eaten such a food, but she's heard it mentioned in books like Caddie Woodlawn and the Little House on the Prairie books. When listening to The Long Winter there was one part where Almanzo's horse ran off with some anetlope and they weren't sure they'd ever see the horse again. Nadia and Ian both piped up and said - the horse will make it fine because we know she's in the later books (we already listened to the last two books of the series). This proves they are definitely paying attention. Yay! Last Sunday was promotion Sunday at church and the start of Soul Patrol (kid's choir), and Wednesday was the start of my choir rehearsals. We missed all of that so this means tomorrow morning will be promotion Sunday for my three kiddos (bigger changes for Oliver and Nadia than for Ian), and tomorrow will be Oliver's first time in Soul Patrol. I will hopefully make it to the choir rehearsals starting next Wednesday night. I have missed it.