What do you get when you throw the following ingredients together?
-Labor Day weekend (use only two days)
-4 Children under the age of 8 (best when one of them is a newborn)
-Miniature Golf, (for best results use 3 little boys with golf clubs AND balls to hit)
-Hershey’s Chocolate World (with lots of chocolate sauce)
-Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (best when used on the second day when everyone is tired and sick of each other)
If you’re an intelligent parent, you know what you get when these ingredients are thrown together. For the rest of you, read on.

I didn’t really get a summer this year and I wanted to end the summer with a bang. So for Labor Day weekend we decided to go to Gettysburg, hitting Hershey PA and Chocolate World on the way. We also wanted to do Dutch Wonderland, a great little amusement park near Hershey for kids 12 and under (think Hershey Park Jr.) We thought we were ambitious, but really, we were just insane. We left Thursday evening when Rock got home from work. I had everything packed and the car was loaded BEFORE he got home. I basked in his impressed incredulity at my packing powers and then we were off. A fun side note about the packing; At one point during the day I was packing something while Ladybug laid in my lap. For some reason at that moment a great realization hit Go Go and he exclaimed, “You mean we’re taking Ladybug with us?!”

Thanks to modern technology (portable DVD players are a miraculous invention) and our older boys blossoming interest in reading chapter books, the drive to the hotel was fairly smooth. When we got to the town where the hotel was, Mr. President said, “Where the heck are we?” And from then on throughout the trip Blue Jeans was always asking, “Hecka are we? Hecka are we?”

Getting all our stuff into the hotel was quite the adventure. We drew a lot of attention. I can only imagine what the people watching us were thinking of our little circus as with arms loaded to overflowing, each of us carrying a small child we walked into the hotel. All while yelling at the bigger boys to “Stay on the sidewalk!”, “Stop dropping the pillow!” and “Don’t hit your brother on the head with the sleeping bag!” A scene like this in Utah would not turn a head, but out here in the east-we are our own little circus.

Friday morning we headed to Dutch Wonderland. The boys had a blast chatting with Dragons,

flying through the air,

driving bulldozers,

and cars.

For Go Go, happiness is driving a vehicle- of any kind. But driving an ORANGE vehicle..that is heaven.

This part of our day went very well. Ladybug slept the whole time in her stroller, there were rides that fit everyone’s level of adventure , AND there was plenty of parking!

If you ever want to steal a stroller, Dutch Wonderland is the place to go.

We were feeling pretty good about ourselves and so we decided to do the miniature golf course. We, intelligent parents that we are, thought it would be fun to do as a family. Yes, that’s right, with all 4 children under the age of 8. So we marched ourselves in, got everyone their weapons, I mean golf clubs, and headed to the first hole. The girl at the desk looked at us like we were crazy, but we headed out clueless. What ensued can only be described as complete and utter chaos. Kids running in every direction, balls flying through the air and into water, clubs waving, parents chasing, two year old climbing, 7 year old whining, 6 year old careening and baby crying. I off roaded with the stroller through the trees, rocks, waterfalls and streams trying to keep up with Blue Jeans as he hit his ball everywhere BUT in the holes. Rock chased after Go Go who hit his ball once at each hole as hard as he could and then ran on to the next one determined to get to the end as fast as he could. Mr. President, the only one old enough to care about the game being done the right way, stood there and complained that no one was doing it the right way! If you’d been a bystander, this is what you would have heard, “Wait!, No, Stop! Don’t throw your club in the water!” “No fair, he’s using his hands to put the ball in!” “Cool, they give you a net so you can get your ball out of the water over and over again!” “No, you have to hit your ball in the HOLE, not the WATER!” I can only imagine what we looked like.

Believe it or not, about the 4th hole in I received a gift from heaven.. the gift of blessed perspective. Suddenly I saw how amazingly funny the whole situation was and I started to laugh. I laughed so hard I cried! Rock says it was like an out of body experience because it was so uncharacteristic of me. If you’ve read my blog much you know that I usually have high expectations about experiences like this one and those expectations are almost never realized. I usually just get frustrated. But for the first time I was able to see the humor in the moment and let go of my expectations. I just went with the flow instead of fighting against it. I let them run around and play like they wanted to, not like I wanted them to. And I followed them around laughing so hard tears ran down my face, catching as much of it on film as I could. We managed to trick them into skipping about 7 holes which shortened the whole ordeal and by the time we were done they had had the time of their life. And so had I.

Here are the picture highlights.

Uh, wrong way, Blue Jeans

Oh Look! A stream to hit the ball into!

Like I said, boys running in all directions….

Smart parents would have quit then. But no, we decided to keep going and hit Chocolate World in Hershey PA the same day. On the way we stopped at Taco Bell to eat dinner. Trying to feed 4 little kids at a restaurant is no easy task and at times I didn’t have enough hands….

When we did reach Chocolate World, Go Go got out of the car and said, “I don’t see any chocolate anywhere!” while Blue Jeans was still in the car yelling, “Buckle me OUT!”

Once inside, we took a fun tour to learn about the inner workings of the chocolate factory. We watched the life cycle of a cocoa bean from rainforest to liquid chocolate vat, to packaged Hershey bar.

Then instead of quitting because we were all very tired and Mom and Dad were getting grouchy, we attempted yet another crazy feat. We did the “Dessert Creation Studio” where you get to create your own dessert right at your table. Imagine 3 little boys let loose at a table covered in chocolate ingredients. Not something to be undertaken by the faint of heart.

Mr. President made a Hershey’s Cookie Pizza and Go Go and Blue Jeans shared a Sundae that was bigger than them. If you’re thinking that it took a whole package of wipes to clean them up, you’d be right!
Finally we headed back to our hotel utterly exhausted. Ladybug serenaded us with her great set of lungs the whole way back. Thus ended day 1 of our crazy trip.

On day 2 we drove to Gettysburg. It probably goes without saying that by the time we got there, the boys were fighting in the back seat, now tired of our little adventure, Ladybug was not happily sleeping all day like she had the day before and Mom and Dad’s patience was wearing thin. So we did Gettysburg in fast forward. I still insisted that we do a few things because we had driven all that way and I wanted to get at least SOME history learned or at least experienced. I was not about to let them see Gettysburg without listening to the Gettysburg address- read in Dad’s most convincing Abe Lincoln.

While the bigger boys listened to those moving words with rapt attention, Blue Jeans reverently studied the grave stones in the cemetery.

I am very proud to say that by the time we were done at Gettysburg we had a new found appreciation and respect for this special place in US History.

No really!

Bill Cosby says that you are not truly a parent until you’ve had at least two children. If we were in any doubt of that fact before our 3 hour drive home, there was no question by the time we were done. Three little boys stuck in the back seat with no room to move or even breathe do not a peaceful ride make. However, for those of us who like to take the easy way out, there is an antidote to the ‘been in the car too long with my brothers and now I’m going stir crazy disease’. It’s called the Movie Drug!!!! We applied a liberal dose so they could make it home alive.

And there you have it. Our whirlwind Labor Day Weekend trip. Looking back I would classify it as crazy most of the time, fun some of the time. I felt like I was juggling four frenzied, wiggling balls in the air trying to keep them from running into each other or from hurting innocent bystanders. I’m glad we did it, though, because we got a few really great memories made and I learned an important lesson. Quit while you’re ahead.