We took a 17 day trip, and it went much better than I thought it would. There wasn’t any reason it would go poorly, but we’re managing 3 kids and a really long time away from home, so I was reasonably worried. We usually go to NY to visit my family each summer. It’s an easy time to get there for a solid week and make the 12-14 hour drive worth it. This year, I decided I was finally up for the adventure of visiting Mr. ODA’s friend in Delaware too, so we locked it in.

TRAVEL TO NEW YORK

My niece was getting baptized and turning 1. My sister had planned a few options for her baptism, but there were some snafus, and it ended up working out that she could plan both events on one day. It just so happened that these events fell the week before a family wedding in NY as well, so it solidified our travel plans without much effort. The only problem was that the two older kids were in camp until 5 every day the week before. So we needed to get from Central KY at 5 pm on Friday to Long Island by 12 pm on Saturday. No traffic, no incidents creating longer stops out of the car, etc. and it’ll take 12 hours to get there. And that it did.

We picked the kids up at about 4:45 pm. We drove a few hours until it was time for dinner. We made a quick stop for food and then drove until 9:30 when we stopped for gas and got the kids situated for sleeping in the car. I was worried it wouldn’t go well because there’s a history of kids crying because they can’t move freely once falling asleep, but they made it the whole night. I was very happy and impressed. Mr. ODA drove from then until just after 2:30 am. I probably got an hour of sleep that whole stretch. Then I took over and we pulled into my dad’s house at 4:45 am. I was worried about getting there before the sun came up so that the kids wouldn’t think it’s day time and would go back to sleep, and we were cutting it close. I put the two big kids in a room with it fully blacked out and then I slept with the youngest in a twin bed to make sure he understood the assignment. He struggled, and we had light peeking in at 6:15, but we got back to sleep until 9:20.

NEW YORK ADVENTURES

Baptism and first birthday party took the whole first day, and the kids actually did pretty well considering the lack of sleep. Then we spent the rest of the week either in my dad’s pool or at a beach, except for the one night we went to a wedding. We traveled to Fire Island for a day to visit family friends. My dad has ferry tickets from his days working on the island, so that didn’t cost us anything, and we just paid for parking. The family that is there vacationing offered us lunch, so there weren’t any costs for being there.

While in NY, our costs are usually minimal because we stay at my dad’s, and the goal is to just be around family, so there aren’t huge expenditures. Our total spent in NY was $400. Just under $100 was gas, and $25 went towards EZ Pass (who knew that starting our EZ Pass journey in NY when we lived in Albany would pay off for so long because now we have a NY-issued pass that gets us discounts for traveling over NYC bridges).

Our biggest expense was the night that Mr. ODA and I went out for dinner in a waterfront town. We had dinner and drinks and spent a whopping $135. It’s super out of character for us, but, on that note, it’s also nice to spend time just the two of us, which is rare. My dad and his girlfriend took the kids for the night. They had the time of their life! I was really nervous, but it was totally worth it for them, even if they didn’t get home until nearly 10 pm! I love that they have those memories.

We didn’t make it to NYC. We had planned to be in NY for a couple more days than we ended up doing. We also didn’t plan to have so many activities while we were there. Being that the first two days were significantly busier than I anticipated after a night of overnight travel, I wanted that Monday to be more relaxing on the kids and not so stimulating. Then we planned to go to Fire Island on Thursday, and I was worried about dragging them through NYC and all that walking instead of resting. As Mr. ODA started mapping out a plan, it seemed the costs were going to be higher than he thought. So between the cost and the anticipated kid behavior, we didn’t end up making it there.

TRAVEL TO NEW JERSEY

For the second phase of the trip, we spent two days in NJ and then moved on to Delaware. We had originally planned to be in NY until we went to Delaware on that Wednesday, but Mr. ODA thought we could use the opportunity to explore some areas we typically wouldn’t. Usually we’re just trying to get home, which takes a whole day, so we don’t make stops near NY. It was definitely worth it, but that’s a story for the next post.

SUMMARY

The whole trip only cost us $1350, which included two hotel stays. We were entertained the whole time and the kids had fun. All the time in the pool ended up giving the kids some new skills. The littlest one started swimming independently. The two bigger ones grew so comfortable that they started working on dives and flips into the pool. They also were diving for things at the bottom of the pool, which was fun to watch, and not something they felt comfortable doing in the past. It may be time for us to invest in our own pool. 😉