Lake George trip

This weekend we went on a road trip to with another family to Lake George, NY.

The other family suggested we rent a 12-passenger van. I was envisioning this:

But we actually got one of these:

It was amazing to sit between Sally and Darcy without being squished!

Our first stop was apple picking at Sarasota Apple. Here are the girls, waiting to get started. (I took some photos in this post with my camera phone, and Yancy took the others with an actual camera.)

Here we are hunting among the trees for the type of apples we wanted to pick. Darcy and I are some of the tiny dots on the horizon. Jesh is holding a bag in the foreground.

Sally zonked out pretty early into this part of the adventure.

Afterward, we tried apple cider donuts. I'm not a big fan of donuts, but these were amazing.

We stayed in a Super 8, which provided one of Jesh and Darcy's favorite parts of the trip: jumping on the beds. Sally was so happy to be free of the car seat / stroller / high chair.

Other than beds to jump on, our hotel was also fun because it had a play ground. Jesh was as happy as Sally to be out of the car.

Darcy was too cold. The weather dropped a lot in our region this weekend, and it was also colder because we were further north.

I'm pretty sure Darcy was probably saying, "Up, Daddy! Up!" when this picture was taken, which translates to "Stop taking pictures and pick me up! I'm frozen!"

The next morning, we drove to a lookout point on Prospect Mountain. We saw some of the most beautiful landscapes with changing leaves I have ever seen.

I sat in the car with the sleeping Bean while everyone else took a shuttle to the summit.

This is the point at which Darcy decided the cold was not worth the fun. Jesh is still having a blast.

Sally slept through all of Prospect Mountain. I would have liked to have seen the view and picked some leaves to dry, but I loved the quiet time.

I have the Bean bundled because it was cold! The car got colder and colder as we sat there. It started hailing. I was just about to turn on the motor to warm us up when my popsicle family came back.

A non-highlight of our trip was eating out. We had lunch at Olive Garden. Eating there with kids was such a waste of time, money, and patience! Here is Jesh trying to entertain himself.

And Darcy, doing everything Jesh does.

Our last stop was IKEA. It was supposed to be a fun break for the kids and the adults because IKEA has a supervised playland where most of the kids could play while we shopped, but Smaaland was closed. If we had known this, we wouldn't have stopped. The kids were too tired to behave well in those models rooms.

For example, Jesh wrote his name on this bunkbed.

I guess I should just feel happy he didn't carve his name on it with a rock.