Our Family Roadtrip

We’ve just returned home from our very first Henry family road trip.

I’ve been on trips before. I’ve even been on trips with Toby and with Rob before, but never before have all 3 of us set out -- WITHOUT GRANDPARENTS - -on our own.

We headed down to West Virginia, stopping in Niagara Falls, Hershey PA and Washington DC. It was two weeks of 115 degree weather, long car rides, hours and hours in swimming pools, frantic searches for highway parks, apple juice drink boxes and new levels of temper tantrums.

There was a little stress and a little longing for home, but the predominant emotion was that of utter contentment. Spending every day as an inseparable threesome was absolute heaven and fulfilled my daily longings to have more time with my husband and my son that my hectic life brings me. It was a good sign that both Rob and I (and even Toby) were a little sad to say goodbye to our final destination. This was soon quenched by our realization that the car-saviour DVD player had been scorched to death in the Virginia heat and we had 17 hours of kid to entertain in the car. Needless to say, the closer we got, the more excited we got for home.

DVD player be damned, we made it. We were both exhausted but Toby (who had been cooped up in a car all day) was high on life and filled with beans. We both had to quiet that part of our brains that needed to unpack everything and play with Toby until bedtime. Finally - -FINALLY - -bedtime arrived. As we put our exhausted kid to bed I gave him the usual hug, kiss and “I love you”, but this time I added on, “Thank you for a great trip, Toby. I’m a very lucky Mommy.” Toby pulled away from our embrace and with a serious look directly into my eyes replied, “I’m lucky, too, Mommy.”