Super Sesame Vacation

What a blast we had last week! Such adventure (sorta)! We spent 2 days at Sesame Place (near Philadelphia) then drove up to Tom's River, New Jersey to a little museum called Insectropolis. Holy bugs, batman. After resting for a day we went to the Palisades Center mall for a day of shopping and fun.

The kids were awesome. I think we only had to threaten to "leave the park right now" one time, which is pretty good considering! Corinna was an angel. It's like she was reading the 'How To Be a Good Baby While on Vacation" manual. While at Sesame we splurged on a private cabana...it's $130 of awesomeness. It's private, you get a refrigerator filled with 10 waters, 6 beach towels, a fan, and a safe. Just a nice place to go to change into bathing suits, eat in the shade, etc.... It was crowded compared to last year, but from the word on the street, it's because it has been so very rainy, that the first nice day or so in ages, people just came out in droves. even with the crowds though, I doubt we waited more than 15 minutes for the longest ride line. The water was cold. Poor Jake wanted to go on so many more water rides than he did, but he was just shivering. And Aidan wasn't affected by the cold, which kind of just got Jake jealous or angry or something. Aidan was hesitant to ride the roller coaster at first, but he eventually gave it a try and LOVED it. The smile on his face said it all. And for some reason, the hotel decided to upgrade (FOR FREE!) our reservation from a typical suite to the Deluxe King suite. OMG, it was INCREDIBLE. There was a full dining room table with buffet, pull out couch, kitcheonette, etc...it was so cool. The first night there we actually had friends over who live down that way...with their 2 kids ...the four kids were playing freeze tag in the hotel room and not bothering us..that's how big it was! We all slept pretty well, too. A first. you know what a rotten traveller I am, but I did good! So did Corinna. Really--best-baby-ever!!!

We went to Insectropolis the next day. I earned many mommy points by actually going inside. I thought Jake's head would explode. Within 10 minutes of being there he was holding a tarantula (which they don't usually let you do, but they let Jake--I guess they could read it in his face). So what do they do after he holds a million other creepies? They give us--for free--a shedded tarantula exoskeleton, a live catepillar, and a moth sack that will grow into this giant white moth for us to set free. Apparently Jake made quite the impression on them. You can't imagine his face during the whole thing. My chatty patty was speechless. Aidan hung in there, too. He was creeped out by touching anything, but the rest of it was cool enough for him.

I *love* this vacation!

Corinna turned 6 months old while we were away. Poor girl also got an ear infection and fluid in one ear in combination with teething. So that explains a wee bit of the fussiness since we've been home.

more pictures to come!