Please don't let us fall off the cliff (Day 1)

Last Thursday (6/12) as our saga begins,

I readied all of our stuff for vacation, and then the children and I waited for Paul to get off work so we could set off for Pittsburgh. my dad stopped by in the afternoon to bring some stuff by the house. He wanted to spend some time with the kids before we left, so he took them to the backyard to play. A couple of minutes later he came back with a groundhog.

Many of you are aware that we have been trying to get rid of a groundhog for the past year. We had a trap sitting in our yard so long that we'd pretty much given up and were planning to call an exterminator. Well apparently our woodchuck finally decided to check out the trap. My dad took him (trap and all) and stuck him in the back seat of his vw convertible. Then he took him to a nature preserve to set him free.

Shortly after Papa left I had to nurse the baby. The other kids were playing quietly. I should have known something was up. When Omi finally finished I found what my adventurous children had accomplished. They had gotten a two pound bag of mozzarella cheese (shredded) and mixed it with water to make cheesy goop. (This is approximately when Paul arrived home). So I called Nana (my hero) who offered to clean up the cheese mess so I didn't have to clean it before leaving.

So off we set on our trip. We took US 30 from Ft. Wayne most of the way across Ohio. When it came time to stop for dinner there was nowhere to stop. So we went passed exit after exit. Finally we saw an exit sign that had a Long John Silvers, Dairy Queen, and KFC on it. We assumed that if they had all of these things there would be somewhere else that we liked.

So after exiting we saw a place called Woody's and a Marathon station with a miniatureLong John Silvers, Dairy Queen and KFC. The DQ didn't have anything but ice cream stuff, and the KFC only had breaded chicken. So with our fish and wheat allergies we decided to go onward. Paul wanted to go to Woody's. But I wanted to go up another exit to McD's which the gas station attendant told me how to find.

Fortunately, Paul went along with it. Everyone was delighted to see that McD's had a playland!!! So the kids had fun and played. I had a salad (because I didn't want to gain any weight, because of my bridesmaid dress).

After dinner we set off again. The kids napped part of the time, but spent the last hour or so of the trip screaming (from about 1 AM onward).

We did just fine until we got off of I-279. It was dark and spooky at this point. We went up a twist road called cemetery lane (which wound around a cemetery) and then followed some other winding roads in the dark.

We finally made it into Millvale (to runnerdave's house where we would be staying for the week). Millvale apparently does not feel the need to label most of it's streets so we were trying to follow the directions. We turned onto a street that looked right. Then we turned to go up a really steep hill. Up and up and up we went. At the top of the hill we looked over at the house. It wasn't Dave's house. It didn't look at all like Dave's house. And unlike the hill that Dave lives on, this one didn't have a turnaround area at the top. Instead it had the edge of a cliff.

I had been driving, but there was no way on earth that I was going to drive down that hill. So Paul and I switched places. Then I sat in the passenger seat and repeated Psalm 23 to myself and prayed silently that we wouldn't fall off the cliff (the children were screaming).

Eventually we got turned around and went down the hill. We drove a few streets up and found the correct hill and drove to the top. We were so tired that we didn't even bother to unload stuff. We just got all the kiddos out and took them inside and went to bed.

too be continued...