The Kints go on vacation

Okay, so here I am on night two of vacation, here's a quick recap.

Stacie had done a good bit of the getting ready process on Wednesday night, so although there was some stuff for me to do Thursday morning, I mostly cleaned the house (I hate coming home to a mess). Malin had dance again until 11, so we weren't really planning on leaving until afternoon anyway. My Dad and Stepmom stopped over for about an hour to say their goodbyes since they are heading back to Florida before we get home. Got so busy getting around and loading the car that 1:00 rolled around (Our 'scheduled' departure time) before we knew it. We were all ready to go, but we hadn't gotten lunch for the kids. So we loaded in the car, hit Sheetz for subs in the car, got gas, went to the bank, and were on the road about 1:20.
The drive here was easy. No wrong turns, very little traffic...pulled in to the hotel at about 3:10. Got checked in and settled, and the first order of business was to take the kids swimming at the hotel's pool. We must have spent at least an hour swimming, then got cleaned up for dinner. Stacie went through the hotel directory and narrowed our choices down to two restaurants. We asked the front desk, and of the two, they recommended the 'Allentown Brewworks', so that's where we went. We had to drive in to Allentown, so we got to see a lot of the town's architecture. The downtown is very odd - one high rise right in the middle of town (The PP&L building) with nothing else higher than 5 or 6 stories. Anyway, I intentionally parked a handful of blocks away, so we got a nice walk in also. The restaurant was pretty nice, and very reasonably priced. The five of us ate for $50, including an appetizer and a beer for me. Took an indirect route back to the hotel to see more of the town, and then started the whole winding down process. Had a little bit of stress getting three co-located kids to bed at the same time, but all-in-all, not too bad. I fell asleep on the floor next to Darin's crib and my back was all screwed up when I woke up, that's why I didn't blog last night. Just crawled right in to bed.
Today started pretty early considering the kids were up late, but we long ago found out that's a losing battle with our kids (forcing them to sleep in - only takes 1 to disrupt the whole process) so we got started. Had breakfast at the hotel, a very nice buffet for the price of it (free with the room!), and then headed to Easton to the Crayola 'factory'. Turns out it's not so much a factory as a hands-on house full of Crayola stuff. I was a bit disappointed by that, but the kids thought it was great. I didn't think it cost much, and we came home with loads of stuff. Also included with admission was a ticket to a canal museum, located in the same building. They had several neat water tables, which were Gavin's favorite part of the day. Malin said that her favorite activity was the 'hot wax' paint -- They had a station full of melted crayons that you could use as 'paint'. All the kids had a minor melt down at one point or another, but we made it through the day without any major issues, and we even got Darin to nap in his stroller. After everyone had their fill of that, we decided to do something a little different - we headed to the 'Ringing Rocks'. This was about a 1/2 hour drive out in to the middle of nowhere. It's just a big field of rocks that have so much iron in them that if you hit them with a hammer, about a third of them ring like a bell. We weren't really prepared with footwear - there was no path or anything through the rocks - but I had thought to grab a little hammer out of one of the kids tool boxes, and that worked neat. Darin was really too little to be climbing around, but the other two had a good time. It was a good way to get the last of their energy out of them.
Stopped at a Lone Star on the way home for dinner, and had excellent behavior from the kiddos. (although we did bribe them for dessert). Back to the hotel for baths, and another only fairly easy time getting everyone settled (Gavin is sleeping on the floor right now!) I'm heading to bed momentarily. Tomorrow we have planned the DaVinci Science Center...