Happy Birthday, TJ!

Well, we've got our first road trip with three kiddos under our belt! We wouldn't have missed the chance to head to State College the first weekend of June to celebrate TJ's first birthday with all the Shibata's! We hadn't seen TJ since Thanksgiving and boy had he grown and changed...they tend to do that at his age. :)

Since to this point, Stevie has not been a big fan of his car seat or the car, we opted to break the drive up as much as possible. On Friday night, we drove as far as Grandma and Grandpa Shibata's in Ohio. We took our time and stopped for supper about half way through...so far so good. The next morning, we got up and drove the rest of the way to our destination. Marie was pretty excited about getting to ride with Grandma and Grandpa, especially since they were going to stop in Pittsburgh to pick up Aunt Jess. In fact, she was SO excited that she and Joey got up at 6:30 in the morning! For those of you that know our kids' sleeping habits, you also know that this is COMPLETELY out of character for them.

Saturday's drive also went fairly well...just a single stop to feed Stevie and let Joey run around a little bit. We arrived in State College shortly after lunch, just in time to have a hot dog and some cake! A thunderstorm rolled through, so everyone moved inside for a while. No one seemed to mind too much; we all had fun watching all the cousins "help" TJ open presents.





Thankfully, the thunderstorm was short-lived. It cleared up later in the afternoon so we were able to head outside and play. There was a quick baseball game, play-dough, a bean bag toss (with the added difficulty of simultaneously holding a child for the adults), a trip to the nearby park, and general running around.












We were all pretty tired by the time the day was done. We headed to the hotel and got the kids baths and into bed. They all slept pretty well, despite the noisy 14-and-under softball team that was hanging out in an adjacent room. I remember those days...

The next morning, we got up and got ready for church. We headed to Mass on campus and learned more about the Catholic Campus ministry and what's going on with it. Jon is pretty psyched that they have broken ground for a new church and home for the ministry AND that it has the Paterno name attached to it. Come to find out that Jo-Pa's wife Sue has been instrumental in the development of the ministry and finding the means for it to have a home of its own. But back to our trip...

On the walk back to the car, we stopped at the Lion Shrine. But, we couldn't just walk by the Shrine without taking advantage of a photo opportunity, especially when this was Stevie's first visit! However, it was clear that by this time Joey was tired and out of sorts as you can see by the picture. And this was the best one we got!


We then headed to Hoss's to have lunch with Jenn's parents and the rest of the Shibata clan before we all headed our separate ways. We attempted to get a shot of all the grandkids. At least I can say we were successful in getting them all in the frame at one time. We'll have to work on the smiles and actually looking at the camera when they're a bit older.




On Sunday afternoon, we drove back to Aurora to stay another night with Grandma and Grandpa Shibata. The weather was beautiful that evening and the next day. The kids got to go outside and practice their golf swings (note that Joey seems to have confused his golf swing and his slap shot), got to go to the park to play with Grandma and Grandpa, and even took a dip in the community pool before leaving. If they weren't tired yet, that sure did it.



We drove back to Michigan on Monday, with a couple more stops than we would have liked, but we made it. Actually, considering that the kids were in the car for 4+ hours for 4 days straight, they did just fine. I think we'd do it again. :)

PS - While I've been meaning to post this for awhile now, I guess it's appropriate that I finally got to it today since TODAY is TJ's actual birthday. Happy Birthday, Teej! We love you!