You take the good, you take the bad...

...and then you have our 4th of July weekend. Let's recap. After loading the car up with what looked like enough stuff to take a 2 week vacation, we picked Brian up at his office around 4:15 and left shortly thereafter. It's normally about a 4.5-5 hour drive to get to my in-laws house; we were expecting maybe a bit longer this time with the baby, no big deal. What we were NOT expecting was hitting almost 2 hours of traffic just 45 minutes outside of Pittsburgh. When I say traffic, I mean the kind where people have turned their cars off to keep them from overheating and are just walking around outside. Dead stop. Parking lot. 3.5 year old. 6 week old. 90 degree heat. Have you built up an image in your mind yet? Not pretty, huh?? We finally got through and the rest of the trip was fine, but it did take us a total of 7 hours after all of that.

Saturday was a new day, and we were excited because Aunt Amy would be meeting Liam for the first time.



Later that day, Brian's aunt, uncle and cousin came over to visit and we enjoyed some yummy food and hopped in the pool. Jake was super excited to swim, and we practically had to drag him out of there, teeth chattering, lips blue, insisting that he wasn't cold :)





Sunday was a gloomy, rainy day, but it was nice to just relax. It did clear for just a bit in the afternoon and Jake was able to hop back in the pool. He even did some swimming on his own with his swimmies; he was so proud of himself!



And as you saw in the video I posted earlier in the week, Gracie joined in the pool party as well :)



And thank goodness we were able to relax on Sunday because on Monday, Jake woke up with a fever and was miserable. By late afternoon, his fever had spiked to 103.4 even after getting tylenol throughout the day :( Poor guy; I felt so bad that he was so uncomfortable and because he had so been looking forward to swimming all day again. ugh.

His fever was gone by the next day, but he was still not himself. And unfortunately, we had another long drive back home. So, I have to say that it was the first time we've had to travel with a sick kid and it's something I hope to not have to do again anytime soon!! I know he was still feeling sick, but man. He must have felt bad because he actually asked me to turn off the DVD player. He didn't even want to watch TV, we were banking on him just staring blankly in half of a trance the whole trip. at one point, I begged Brian to drop me off at the nearest exit and when he refused, I asked if we could just pull over and buy tranquilizers somewhere (for me-I wouldn't tranquilize my own kid, I'm not THAT bad of a mom!) :)

We finally made it home and lived to tell the tale. Tranquilizer free.