My internal alarm clock once again woke me up at 6:54 am. Although it seems a bit early to me, once I saw the sun coming through the windows, I was awake pretty quickly! Finn woke up pretty quickly, but Spencer staying sleeping until about 7:30, which was great, because he obviously needed the sleep!

After we all woke up, we headed over to the grocery store to stock up. It's a little hard to feed 4 people with half a glass of chocolate milk at crackers. After spending way too much at store, we headed back to the house for breakfast. After that, it was BEACH time!
Although Finn had a lot of fun at the hotel pool a few nights ago, he wanted NOTHING to do with the ocean. He screamed and cried and ran away from the water. Bribery. Threats. Promises. Nothing worked. So, he stayed on the beach and played instead. He would not help Spencer and Greg build the sand castle though. They were too close to the water and he refused to go that close. I'm not sure who had more fun building the castle: Greg or Spencer. I'm pretty sure it was Greg, because he even said that he'd like to stop at a store to try to get a rectangular pail for building!
We couldn't forget Paddington. It kind of looks like he's trying to ski down a sand dune, but I didn't want to take too much time positioning him. There were some young Quebecers next to us on the beach, and they were giving me strange looks. What sort of 30-year old woman poses a stuffed bear on a beach and then takes a picture of him with a big SLR camera?Finn, my cute little water-fearing beach bum.Spencer loved chasing these "burs" around. He'd point and run after them. I think they're sandpipers, but I'm not sure.And here is Greg playing in the waves with Spencer. Unlike Finn, Spencer LOVES the water and would have run in if we'd let him. He laughed and played for a long time. Greg is currently uploading a video to YouTube, so I'll include a link to that in my evening update!

We are finally here. After almost 1700 km (just over 1050 miles) we pulled into our new house (for the week). It is nice and big and clean. We forgot to bring a baby gate to put on the stairs, but Spencer knows how to navigate stairs pretty well, so hopefully it'll be ok. Because the sun had already set before we arrived, we haven't been able to truly appreciate our view yet, but tomorrow morning we'll take a better look.

We did hit the outlet mall this morning. It was hot. Really hot and humid. Greg actually enjoyed shopping (don't believe him if he tells you differently) and he bought more stuff than I did. Since we wanted to get going, I didn't get to as many shops as I would have liked to, but being the nice guy that he is, he promised that we'd stop at another one on the way home. Further north. Where it's not so hot. And then I can really do some damage!

Going over a bridge heading into Norfolk, VA. If you squint, you can sort of see the outline of the ship.

Woo hoo! We finally reached our destination state.
Over the bridge towards the Outer Banks.
This is the view from our deck. I can't wait to see what it looks like in the morning!
The boys also went to sleep at a fairly reasonable hour tonight. They are sharing a room, and I can only hope that they will sleep in until at least 7:30am!

I am now off to bed.

Becuase we arrived in Hershey so late the previous day, we had to postpone our trip to Chocolate World until this morning. It was fun, and Finn LOVED the Disney-esque ride through the "factory" at the museum.

Our uber-cheesy touristy photo in front of Chocolate World.



Paddington, along with Maggie (our Magellan GPS). He was very bored today, seeing as that I forgot to bring him into Chocolate World with us. After getting stuck in Harrisburg due to some really wacky detour signs, and then fighting traffic for a couple of hours, we decided to take a brake and stopped by a Target. We do not have Target stores in Canada, so it was a nice treat! Here is Finn pole dancing at the entrance, and Spencer attempting to roll the concrete ball.

Spencer was very excited that we found Chick Hicks from the Cars movie.
And thank goodness for headphones. player in the car. I'm not sure that I could stand to hear the Mighty Machines theme song more than once on the trip.
Virginia was also an extremely beautiful state. There was more traffic than we'd expected, which delayed our arrival in Williamsburg, however we didn't mind too much since we had some nice scenery to look at!That's about all for today. Spencer doesn't seem to like hotels, and is notgoing to sleep. I'm hoping that I can convince him that it's bed time!

After much crying, screaming, playing and drinking of water, both boys are finally asleep. 11pm ended up being the magic bedtime. I really hope it shifts back to 8pm from now on.


Since I'm still awake, I figured I'd post the pictures and tell you a little about today.

The alarm went off at 6am this morning. This was early. Very early. Three things happened that don't usually happen in the morning.

• Greg actually woke up and got ready in a respectable amount of time
• I was awake BEFORE the boys were
• I managed to catch the tail-end of the sunrise on camera

Finn starting off his day with a cup of coffee. Kidding. It was milk. But he was pretty excited to have a mug to drink from "like daddy does."

We were on the road at about 7:30, and drove to until we stopped for an early lunch at about 11. Thought we'd stop at a bank to convert some of our CAD to USD. Guess what? They don't do that here. Anywhere. We went to a total of 4 banks. Not one would do it.

Paddington waiting for Greg at the bank. After lunch, we got back in the van, and noticed that the A/C was not working as well as it should have been. Greg did a few checks, but everything seemed to be ok. We drove to Scranton, and ended up finding a dealer who fixed us up. We were back on the road in just under 2 hours. Thankfully the dealership had a waiting room with a tv and cartoons!

Can you believe there is a Mifflin Avenue in Scranton? How cool is that? (only those of you that watch The Office will get it).

Overall, we were very impressed with PA. Scranton was a bit of a let-down. As fans of The Office, we were hoping for big, but at least the people were nice. We didn't realize that PA was so mountainous.

We arrived in Hershey, PA much later than we'd originally hoped, which meant we were too late to visit the Chocolate Museum. We did drive around the town for a little while. Both Greg and I agreed that it is one of the cutest towns we'd ever been too. Some of the main street names were chocolate-themed, and the street lights were Hershey's Kisses!

We ate supper, and then returned to our hotel for some swimming. Both of the boys were SO hyper and had a blast in the pool. Unfortunately, rather than wearing them down before bed, it seemed to have energized them even more (thus the late bedtime). They were wonderful at the restaurant though and two people came over to our table and commented on how well-behaved our kids were. Yay us!!

One other thing. On our way from Toronto to Kingston, we noticed that at every overpass, there were lots of people dressed in red, holding Canadian flags. It finally dawned on us that there was a convoy on its way from Trenton with a dead soldier.

(On 24 August 2007, the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) announced that the stretch of Highway 401 from Glen Miller Road in Trenton, Ontario to Don Valley Parkway/Highway 404 in Toronto would bear the additional name "Highway of Heroes" in honour of Canada's fallen soldiers, notably those who have died on duty in Afghanistan. This stretch of the freeway is often travelled by a convoy of vehicles carrying a fallen soldier's body with his or her family from CFB
Trenton to the coroner's office in Toronto, at the Centre for Forensic Sciences.)

It saddened us, and I could hardly hold back the tears as we drove underneath each overpass. It touched me so much that people came out like this to honour our fallen soldiers.

Off to bed. I'm the last one up, which doesn't happen too often. I hope tomorrow goes well. There is an outlet mall involved!

After a really long day, we're in Hershey, PA. I have lots of pictures to post, but it's 10 pm and the boys are still awake. Spencer is crying and Finn is just not sleeping. I hope to post more tomorrow. Hopefully they'll sleep better tomorrow night.