2.33 Lancaster, PA & Saba's visit

July 29, 2013
By Cyndi

What a weekend!  I’m exhausted and it will probably take all week to catch up, before we do it all again.  My dad arrived Friday evening.  Right after lunch on Saturday, we packed up and headed out for Lancaster, PA – about a 2.5 hour drive, of which the boys only napped for about 45 minutes.  Matt’s map function on his phone was acting up and since I was driving small country roads, we missed a few turns but finally arrived at The Rail Road Museum of PA (www.rrmuseumpa.org)

 They have a huge indoor facility of old train cars, engines, and cabooses and an outdoor yard you can walk around.  We missed hitting up the interactive area, since it closes a bit before the museum closes.  Both T&Z were quite scared that the trains were going to move and it took about 5 minutes for them to even cross over into the train “yard.”   Once they became more comfortable, the next 1.5 hours consisted of “Stop Running” … “Please stop jumping” … “Inside voices” … “Do not climb” …  I’m not too sure what they got out of it besides seeing trains, but they had fun.

We left there and headed out to pick up fresh beer - with our growler we brought along - from Lancaster Brewing Co & pizza before heading to the hotel, Best Western Eden Premier (www.edenresort.com).  We checked into our villa (yes, you read that right) and found our room.  It was a two bedroom studio king villa.  There was a small bedroom (with bunk beds) where we set up the kids' tents, king bed for Matt & I, along with a pull-out for Saba.  We ate pizza and quickly changed and headed for the hotel’s outdoor pool and splash pad.  We enjoyed the splash pad and then moved to the pool.  Zach did GREAT!!  He didn’t want me to help him at all … AHHH Finally, he got it, floating by himself!  Tyler was having a small meltdown and never came in.  So around 715p we headed back to our room and got the kids to bed.

On Sunday, the boys were still sound asleep at 815a, but we had to wake them to get moving for the day.  We packed up and had breakfast and headed to the Choo Choo Barn (www.choochoobarn.com). WOW, this was really cool.  It’s a huge model train setup with city scapes, and so much more!  They had stools for the boys, which they carried around themselves and they spent a full hour taking in all of the different moving pieces.  We bought them a toy in the gift shop, played outside on some trains around the building and headed to lunch nearby at Isaacs Deli (www.isaacsdeli.com)  It was good, and started off even better by giving the kids small bags of goldfish! 

We finished lunch and hit the road home with less wrong turns and 1.25+ hour nap for the guys.  We just hung out the rest of the evening.  There is so much more up to do between Lancaster & Strasburg PA that we will for sure head back.  It’s a very easy drive and doable for a morning up and evening back, though I may have to ditch Matt sometime and go up with a friend for some outlet shopping!!!

And huge thank you to my twin mom friend Keri at pipeandfletch.blogspot.com for her review of Lancaster that made planning this short getaway so easy!

I guess I need to get used to “busy” … August is filling up with local friends, Matt’s birthday – and I can’t wait to see the boys’ excitement when they realize its Daddy’s birthday, maybe a beach or aquarium daytrip, and hopefully some Gimpel family visits!