Family Road Trip 2012

For our vacation week this year, we headed north to Cooperstown, NY where Jaden along with his team, the Carolina Heat, played at the Cooperstown Dreamspark!  It was an amazing trip! I was very worried about the 11 hour drive (please note: my kids do not do well even on one hour road trips!) but only through prayer (and lots of DVD's) the kids did absolutely perfect for the LONG car ride! We stopped on our way up, in Lancaster PA where we visited the Amish Country.

 My kids as well as Justis and I were fascinated with the way the Amish live such a simple lifestyle. The farm country was beautiful and right up my alley as I am in love with farmland and big 'ole farmhouses of any kind! After a night in a hotel (and a swim in the hotel pool, per the kids request), we headed to a Lancaster Amish Auction.

It was blazing hot outside but the auction was a great experience as the kids got to mingle with lots of Amish families who were helping to put on the auction. After the auction we put the 'ole swagger wagon in the wind and headed north towards NY. We finally arrived at our cabin (single wide trailer) on the top of the mountain.  GG and Buddy and T and Papa had cabins right beside ours. Each with their own picnic tables and fire pit. Nothing could have been better for my nature loving, smores making, boys.  From that day on through the next week, it was baseball, baseball, and more baseball! I can't say enough about how beautiful and organized the Dreamspark is, so much more than I had envisioned. We dropped Jaden off at his barrack with the rest of his team.

The boys then learned all about the tradition of "pin trading" at the Dreamspark. Each team has their own pin with their team logo. The goal is to trade your teams pins with other teams until you have collected a pin from each 104 teams that were at the camp that week. Javk and Fisher really enjoyed this! Jaden and his team did an awesome job playing baseball this week. Jaden played both pitcher and center field. We also enjoyed a day canoeing out on the creek by our cabin. It was such a beautiful day!

THIS WAS MY FAVORITE PICTURE OF THE WEEK, FISHER WAS THRILLED TO GO OUT ON THE
FIELD WITH HIS BIG BROTHER!

EXPLORING DOWNTOWN
COOPERSTOWN. 

His team ended the week with a 6 and 3 record and were in the top 20 teams at the park! We are so proud of them! We headed back down south on Thursday afternoon, leaving the gorgeous 75 degree weather behind headed to the heat wave happening back home with temps over 100 degrees!  On our way home we decided we would stop somewhere along the way and stay the night. We weren't sure where, but as we approached Gettysburg, PA, I did some research on my trusty cell phone and thought it might be a place the kids would enjoy. Especially my eight year old history buff!

FISHER WAS NOT TOO SURE
OF ABE. 

We spent time Friday morning in Gettysburg venturing downtown for brunch and then visiting a battlefield. We also caught a little reenactment going on and even ran into Abe Lincoln!

There is nothing I love more than traveling with my family and seeing the kids visit new places and learn about new things.  This trip was one we will always remember and I hope the kids always have fond memories of our 2012 summer road trip!