ROOOAAAD TRIIIIIIP!

Seven days, four hotel rooms plus one "cottage," 2500 clicks, one overheated engine, and a thousand and one great memories later -- and we're home from our first official Family Road Trip, AKA "ROOOOAAAAAD TRIIIIIIIIIIP" - our fave phrase as we bid farewell to one pit stop and hit the highway once again.

Short version? Loaded up last Saturday morning and made the Granby Zoo by 2:00, where we took in "Africa" and the amusement park, closing the place down. Spent the following morning at the zoo and connected waterpark, picnicking there before heading for Quebec City. Checked into a lovely hotel on Saint Anne at 5:00, and spent a great evening in the old city. Enjoyed a caleche ride the following morning before hitting the road for Grand Falls, New Brunswick. Arrived there 5:00 and opted for a few hours in the pool instead of sight seeing in the town. Up and out the following morning and made Grandma and Grandpa Arnold's hilltop home & cottage on the northern shores of the Bay of Fundy by 2:30 on a bright and sunny afternoon.

Had a great couple of days in Nova Scotia with the folks--walking the ocean bottom, touring a gouda farm, piling into a local diner for fresh flounder & chips, playing with cool pirate toys, and hanging out with the family on the deck with an unbeatable view. Hit the road on Thursday evening with plans to drive straight through to Ottawa, but a broken water pump sidelined us in Moncton for 20 hours (and even that was fun!). Arrived home in the wee hours of Saturday morning, exhausted but relaxed and happy and with a sunny weekend left to hang out at Hudson house and get set for the return to work/school. A beautiful trip.

Sam was amazing, and the experience triggered one of those developmental leaps that you can actually see happening in front of you. Once again, we smiled (and secretly congratulated ourselves) at his quick wit, his exuberant joy in small things, his assertions of individual preference, his growing ability to tell stories, to play games. He basked in our undivided attention, seemed to expand and mature before our eyes. In a lot of ways, he came home a different Sam: a Sam who's dug for sea things in the Bay of Fundy mud, who's walked across the shallow end of a pool on tippy toes, who's learned how to play 20 Questions (and kicked his parents' butts at it), who's tried scallops but refused escargot, who's doled out his own spending money on Goodies, a "Canada" fridge magnet that doubles as a calculator, and a peg & board tic-tac-toe game featuring a crocodile in a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses.

(Details, details!) I'll spend some time this week fleshing out this too-short story of the best summer vacation ever. Thank you, thank you, Sam-I-am.