Hershey Park in the Dark!

 Off we went last week on a road trip adventure, stopping along the way to visit friends and family, with a few family excursions here and there. It was a lot of fun! Here are the girls busy with one of mommy's brainchild activities for the car ride :) 

First stop...Auntie Jen's. We had a nice visit catching up and checkout out her new neighborhood. A summer visit seems necessary- with a beach up the road!

 After a pass through Pittsburgh, we hit Hershey. An evening of fun at Hershey Park in the Dark- a Halloween themed special park event. The girls wore their Halloween costumes- Ellie, our black kitty, Aurie, our fairy, and Lia, our Panda. We all had a blast-  riding rides, which they had renamed with a Halloween flair- the Tilt a Whirl was "Witches Brew", etc and eating yummy themed treats like mommy's pumpkin funnel cake topped with warm apples and caramel... omgoodness. There was a little trick or treat area, and fun displays like 'The Great Pumpkin'(a real, huge pumpkin- 837lbs!). We'll have to plan a visit back to try the Reese Peanut Butter Cup Cookie S'Mores! 

Witches Brew fun!

 And then we arrived at our main destination- New Jersey! Our visit with Auntie Kim, Uncle Wayne, Angela, Julia and Elena was a wonderful reconnect and the girls were thrilled to play in the backyard, check out their games and learn some Wii skills! Elena took a particular liking to Aurie and it was cute to watch them together. All in all, it was a glimpse of our girls, a few years from now... one can only hope we'll learn from Kim and Wayne...the masters ;) We loved our afternoon at the zoo, and a trip to a real Jersey Diner. A breathtaking view of New York City from a 9/11 memorial was chilly but memorable, and how nice it was to take advantage of girls old enough to be home alone to head out adults only! ;)

 Our little Prairie Dogs

 Feeding (trying) the birds with seed on a stick..

 The whole gang!

Back through Hershey, with a stop at Chocolate World, on the way back to Grandma's, to pick up a few treats and see how chocolate is made :)

 One of our days in Pittsburgh brought us to the Children's Museum there. It was way cool, with lots of unique things to see and do. We all really enjoyed it. 

 This was all made from packing tape!

 Playing with ice..

 I think this was the funniest one- they had a booth where they took a 5 second video of themselves which then projected up into this screen in the cafeteria. Every 5 seconds, the image would shift and play again, so eventually, with them doing it over and over, (it was pretty quiet in there that day) our girls almost filled up the entire screen. And of course, most of it was silliness... 

 Trying to catch the falling leaves in Grandma and Grandpap's yard before heading out...