Pennsylvania Road Trip: Day 4

By our planned day to drive home, we had two kids and the baby sick with a pretty uncomfortable cold. Sleep was little and complaining was increasing.

We enjoyed breakfast in the beautiful lobby of the hotel, except when I experienced the tiny white martyrdom of receiving criticism from our aghast waitress about my having six children. Chris was away from the table when she came by and inquired about my children and whether I planned to have more (her business?!) and then proceeded to instruct me (in front of said children) about four times that I should not have any more children. I was stunned and told her that we'd be so happy to have more children and that they are a blessing.

It really is stunning that one could think my kind, well-behaved, neatly dressed and groomed, educated and accomplished, and supported financially by a married father (not the taxpayers) children are a problem when I could even cast my eye around this fancy hotel and see people dressed half-naked or acting poorly and in uncivilized ways.

[UPDATE:  I hadn't told my husband about the rude waitress until we returned home.  He is a frequent business traveler with "high status" with this particular hotel chain.  He contact the hotel and asked to speak with the hotel manager.  It turns out the General Manager of the hotel is the youngest of seven children herself.  When my husband relayed the story to her, she was apologetic and sympathetic.  The two got to laughing about ridiculous comments like this; which led to them to trading stories.  The manager assured him that she knew who the waitress was and that she would be "retrained".  The manager also gave my husband hotel "points" in thanks for bringing this to their attention.]

We continued on to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter parish to attend Mass--where I utterly forgot to capture the moment in photography of our visiting with our beloved Fr. Novokowsky, who married us 12 years ago.

It was not an easy Mass for me trying to manage boys (BOYS!) ages 10 months, 2 years, and 5 years, and they simply could not sit through this particular Mass, nor be quiet in the least (breaking out in Winnie the Pooh's "Sing, ho! for the life of a bear!"). I felt humiliated in front of all these families that none of my structure, punishments, or tactics were working, and I ended up spending three-quarters of the Mass outside, steaming, wondering if this even "counts" as my Mass obligation and why I bother, and wondering just how hard it's going to get to homeschool as this little trio of testosterone gets older and wilder.

I have no answers.

After a sit-down lunch in a truly lovely Mexican restaurant, we drove home, stopping, among other pit stops, at the North Carolina Welcome Center to run around in the grass. Thomas spotted an obese chihuahua and insisted that it was a cat.

We finally got home at 8:30 p.m. where we unloaded the vehicle and then let the children catch the first fireflies of the summer outside before coming in for much-needed baths and tumbling into bed way too late.

There were (very) hard moments, but we have (very) hard moments at home too, and it was overall a wonderful trip and family experience.