Weekly Wrap- Up: Our Hershey Park Trip

We had a fantastic week! My husband took three days off from work and the whole family spent 4 days together exploring Pennsylvania and Hershey.  We had been many, many years ago when the boys were small and we thought it would make a perfect mini vacation to take them back now that they were older.  All three boys were tall enough to ride everything in the park and we had a really great time.  The weather was nice and cool and dry and just perfect for walking around an amusement park.

We spent most of our day Friday gearing up for our weekend plans-- packing suitcases, shopping for snacks for the car, doing a little bit of housecleaning, and preparing a few meals using up all the leftovers in the fridge.  We stopped in at Dunkin Donuts to grab some drinks and discovered it was free donut day!  The younger two boys were thrilled to get a free donut with their drink. We had family over our way visiting from California so we spent the afternoon at my mother's house catching up with one another and then we stopped to pick up our new dishwasher and some take out pizza for dinner.

I was woken at the crack of dawn on Saturday.  Alec got up at 3 am, put on his light, and started getting ready.  I crept into his room asking him what he was doing-- he thought we were leaving for our trip and was trying to be prepared.  I assured him we weren't leaving for another full day and got him to go back to sleep.  I finally managed to fall back to sleep too but Ian woke me up at 6 when he was leaving for work.  My husband headed to work to finish up any loose ends and then he took Evan and Ian to the movies to see Solo while Alec and I enjoyed a quiet evening at home.

We headed out around breakfast time on Sunday and after a quick stop in town to eat we drove straight through to Pennsylvania.  As soon as we arrived at the hotel the boys all wanted to go swimming.  They raced each other around and played for an hour.  Once the boys were dried off and got dressed we headed to Indian Echo Caverns and took a tour learning all about the limestone caves (more on this fabulous trip coming to the blog soon!).  We were the only family signed up for the tour so we had the whole place to ourselves.  It was really neat to see in person and just fascinating to see all the different colors and formations formed by the limestone and water.  We ended our day with a nice dinner at Olive Garden and then we headed back to the hotel to watch the original Karate Kid.

Monday morning we headed to Hershey Park as soon as they were opened.  It was a bit overcast and chilly so our first stop was to buy Alec and I some sweatshirts.  We then road the sky ride and checked out a few roller coasters.  Attached to Hershey is an animal park called ZooAmerica and we spent an hour or so walking around seeing all the animals and reading all the signs.  We went back into Hershey, had some lunch, road the antique cars, went on the flume and a few more roller coasters.  It's so funny that on our last trip (when the boys were tiny!) we rode all the kiddie rides and ignored all the big coasters and thrill rides and on this trip we're riding all the big thrill rides and ignoring all the kiddie stuff.  We decided to leave around 4 and headed into the chocolate world long enough to get some milk shakes.  We rested at the hotel and the boys went swimming in the pool again before we headed out to supper at Fuddruckers (Do you have any of those near you? The burgers were amazing!) and then back to the hotel for an early night of bed. (There will be whole posts dedicated to Hershey, ZooAmerica, and Hershey's Chocolate world coming soon!).

We were heading back to Hershey park on Tuesday to finish up a few final rides; the weather forecast was looking pretty iffy but it ended up being really nice and sunny but not hot at all.  The boys each had one or two final rides picked out and we found that the park was pleasantly empty.  We had no wait lines for any of the rides and we ended up riding rides until lunchtime adding in a lot more than we had originally planned on riding.  We got a family flume ride photo and both Ian and Alec ended up discovering a new favorite roller coaster; The Giant Bear and Skyrush (respectively).  We grabbed some lunch and then headed over to Hershey's Chocolate World.  Evan, Alec and I made our own chocolate bars while my husband and Ian were roped into a behind the scenes taste testing challenge.  We took the chocolate tour, grabbed some Hershey's ice cream sundaes, did a bit of shopping and then headed to the hotel so the boys would swim in the pool.  After a few hours of swimming we headed out to dinner at the Longhorn and then settled in for an early night of bed.

I made them take this photo so I could compare it to the one we took when they were younger

Wednesday morning we decided to make one final stop  before leaving Pennsylvania and we went to check out the AACA Museum.  We thought it would be mostly antique cars but found that they had quite a variety of automobiles, buses, motorcycles, and trains.  I was quite taken with the set up of the building too; areas were set to look like old diners, a drive in movie theater, an old motel, etc. (I'll write up a whole post about it another day; I promise!).  After spending an hour or so checking out the museum we headed home and drove straight through.  We arrived home in time for dinner where we ate take out Subway grinders before my husband headed out with the younger two boys to get haircuts.

We ended up back at the doctor's office on Thursday.  Evan woke with a rash all over his body; thank goodness we were home!  The doctor's assured us it was a side effect of his medication and it was safe to continue treatment.  Ian went to work with my husband and spent the morning screening loam while the younger boys helped me grocery shop and get the laundry done.  We spent the afternoon running errands and doing even more laundry.  The boys were thrilled to be home and to see their pets again.  I was exhausted by dinnertime but I'm pretty sure that's just how most moms are the day or two after vacation; right?!

Weekly Weight Tracker

Friday-- Weighed in to see I lost another .2 lbs.  The only exercise I got was cleaning the house and running errands AND I skipped lunch and ate too many slices of pizza for dinner. not a great way to start a vacation week!

Saturday-- Weighed in for another .4 lbs loss.  Lifted weights for 30 minutes.

Sunday- Wednesday I was unable to weigh in and while I didn't get much exercise on our two travel days we did a LOT of walking around the Hershey park on the other two days.   I tried to eat salads and not overdo it too much on park food but I was on vacation in the chocolate capital of the world so I knew Thursday weigh-in was not going to be fun.

Thursday-- I weighed in and gained 1.8 lbs for the week.  I was of course disappointed but really knew that this wasn't awful considering we were on vacation and eating lots of junk food for most of the week.  I'm still down 4.2 lbs overall.

How was your week?


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