Our Trip to New Jersey

We just got back yesterday from a week-long trip to Northern New Jersey to see Wendy's family. It was the first time in 10 years that she was with her brother and her sister at the same time (not to mention her parents). Yes, things were a little hectic and stressful, and there was of course the obligatory misunderstanding, but thankfully we got it over with on day two.

There were two main attractions. First, we visited Bushkill Falls (in NE Pennsylvania) which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been (and the prices were quite manageable, even for our 6-kid family). However, for those who are tempted, I do wish I could have re-done that decision and left those kids who were under 5 at home. It was simply too dangerous for them--or at least, it was too dangerous for us to have taken infant Oob and toddler Choclo both at once.

Our other main visit was Space Farms (in NW New Jersey), a "please-DO-feed-the-animals" zoo combined with a museum of whatever the founder, Ralph Space, was interested in (dolls, cars, clocks, rifles, etc.--all antique, of course). All five non-infants loved it. This was more expensive, though, for our family size, so you'd have to think about it. We saw everything there was to see, moved at the attention span of our kids, and stayed just over 4 hours (including lunch). The biggest attraction is definitely that you get to feed the animals, many of them by hand.


Finally, we did some genealogy. I dropped off some ship manifests that I'd found for Wendy's dad, and we got almost another hour of old family stories on our digital audio recorder (DAR). We also gave copies of the first two CD's worth of old stories to Wendy's brother and sister. We left the DAR up north for brother and sister (who are still there--they're both able to stay several weeks, the lucky dogs) to use with dad and mom.

Those of you who are collecting old family stories, I encourage you to encourage your brothers and sisters to do at least one interview of the older generation. They'll ask different questions than you would, and you'll therefore hear some stories you'd never hear otherwise. I'm looking forward to what our experiment will turn up when we get the DAR back next month.