Our Summer Vacation - Where and Why

So, it took us awhile to land on a vacation option that the whole family could enjoy. We were originally discussing one option, but the more I researched, the more our minds changed. Today, I'm here to share our thought process...and, of course, where we'll be going!

Our goals were to take a few days to enjoy being a family in a fun, relaxed setting. (The "relaxed" part is relative; it's more that we'd take a slow pace.) If it could be a relatively short drive (like, 4-5 hours or less), all the better. We didn't want to try to fit a million things in and overbook, which we learned about last year (we did well, I think, but I did fit a lot in and still missed some stuff! Here's one post and a second recapping our 2014 summer trip.)

We originally considered another trip to Mass., as well as other New England trips (namely, Maine). The more that I looked and realized a) the travel time would be nuts, and b) most of the stuff we'd be doing could be done locally, we turned our attention elsewhere: Pennsylvania.

My MIL had suggested Sesame Place to us awhile back and we put it in the back of our brains...way back. Hadley's not a HUGE Sesame Street fan, but he'll watch it if it's on and we've also raised him watching the OLD episodes, so he knows Bob, Maria, David, etc just as well as he knows Abby, Elmo and Zoe. Then, his grandparents took him to see Sesame Street Live locally and meet Elmo, and he had a great time. After deciding to shift from the Maine trip, I started looking at the website and realized that he's the PERFECT age to visit.

Here are our reasons for making a completely kidcentric vacation choice:

- The place is PERFECT for a three-year-old. He's never been on rides and has a major aversion to getting his face wet, but the rides here seem like he can handle them and will probably love them, and the variety of water areas (gentle, wild, etc) are great to test out his fears. (He loves splashing and playing in water, so there's a splash pad area that he should love no matter what.)

- It's a special time, being pregnant and knowing that it's our last summer with an only child. Yes, I have dubbed it "The Summer of Hadley" and I am totally cool with that.

- It's not too far away. Bam.

- There are options to use local hotels that are family friendly and have a shuttle to get to the joint; the fact that we're going for an extended weekend and won't have to pay for parking (since there are tons of extra costs with this option) adds up. ***Since I'm preggers, I may be able to get half off my ticket when I get there since I can only do a few of the rides and the gentle water areas; fingers crossed!*** 

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I usually try to fit in some history, a fun kiddo activity (usually museum-based), animals, and so forth into a vacation. This summer, however, we've got this all covered with the other cheaper activities we have planned throughout the season.

Stay tuned for a blog post about how we'll be hitting all these marks, and inexpensively