Wednesday: Moving Day

We only had our hotel booked through Wednesday and we decided to stay at a hotel closer to the airport for our last few days because adding an hour of driving time to our schedule of getting to the airport just didn't sound fun.

So we found a hotel near the airport and booked two nights there. We figured since we hadn't even heard from our attorney in PA about clearing ICPC in PA that it would take at least two days before we heard anything from Utah.

A quick explanation about our wait for ICPC: The attorney in PA filed the papers in PA sometime on Friday afternoon. The offices are closed Saturday and Sunday AND, just our luck, Monday because of Columbus day. That means PA doesn't really clear us until Tuesday at the earliest, then they send our paperwork to Utah who, HOPEFULLY, clears us before Thursday because Utah offices are closed on Friday thanks to their 4-days a week work schedule. So, basically, if Utah doesn't clear us fast, we are there for another weekend. Bleh.

So here we are on Wednesday with no word from PA. We are thinking we are definitely staying the weekend. A very very discouraging thought, but what can we do about it?

Back to the events of Wednesday....

On the way to our new hotel we stopped for breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts. Did you know they sell more than just donuts?!!! And they have a drive-thru?!!! Well, they do. And they DO! So we were actually able to eat breakfast, which we had missed that morning because we were too busy packing up our room.

Here is our old room is all of it's glory.

We checked into our hotel and relaxed for a bit.

Our new hotel room. Has a more 'business' feel.

Caleb took a nap. This was his crib at the new hotel. The old hotel gave us a pack'n'play. This hotel gave us baby jail. Caleb didn't seem to mind.

I think Noah took a nap, but I don't remember. He was either sleeping or eating. You know how those babies are.

We just chilled in our room for a bit. Watched some food shows, like "Chopped" which I think we became addicted to in just one evening. Then we went to Babies'R'Us for some more diapers. I swear we went to that store at least 5 times during our vacation. We also went to Target a lot. Those were our "go-to" stores everytime we needed something.

On the way home we stopped at Gino's Pizza for some philly cheesesteaks. Crystal and Keith told us that's the place to go for a good cheesesteak. (FYI, you can get a cheesesteak at any pizza place.) Zack went in to get them for us while I waited in the car.

When he got back he said, "I made the classic tourist mistake. I asked for two Philly cheesesteaks and the guy just kind of looked at me and said, 'So...two cheesesteaks?'" Yeah. We're tourists.

We ate them in the car and then attempted to find an on-ramp to the freeway so we could get home. I think I'll let Zack write a special blog post entirely dedicated to the freeway system in Pennsylvania. There is just not enough room here. Suffice it to say, it is a screwy system and it took us a while to finally get on the freeway. Memo to Philadelphia: Signs that actually take you to the correct place would be a good addition to your city.

When we got back to our hotel Zack went to go heat something up in the microwave (There was one microwave per floor. Luckily we were just a few doors down from it, seeing as we had to heat up baby food and stuff.) when his phone rang. I answered it and it was Lorraine from Act of Love. I think her words went something like, "Carrie. You can go home!"

.........

...what?....

We can go home? But we hadn't even heard from PA about clearing ICPC...

Well, as it turns out, PA overnighted our paperwork to Utah Tuesday night who received it that morning who cleared us that afternoon. Can I tell you how much I love Utah's ICPC office? We've had two adoptions and both times they have cleared us in one day. Thank you fast workers! I guess the guy in charge of our case on PA was out of the office and never told our attorney that we'd been cleared, so that's why we hadn't heard anything. So yea! We can go home!

But wait. We had our hotel room until Friday morning. Non-refundable. So, we had two choices. We could just go home the next morning and pay for a day we weren't using, or we could stay one more day, actually see some things in Philadelphia, and go home Friday. Either way we'd be paying the same. We decided not to try and rush to pack everything for a flight the next morning.

Up next: The exciting conclusion of our stay in PA or, The day it rained.

I Shall Call This Post....Tuesday

Tuesday was our last day in Chester County as we were leaving the next day for a hotel closer to the airport. We decided to visit Hershey. Our days in the hotel were pretty much the same by this time: Sleep until 9:00ish, eat breakfast and such. Caleb goes down for a nap a few hours later, we get ready for the day, all the while feeding and taking care of Noah. By the time we are up and dressed and ready to go anywhere it is about 1:00 in the afternoon. The drive to Hershey is about an hour and a half. We drove through Amish country to get there. For those of you who are wondering, Amish country does have a McDonald's so we were able to get our daily fruit smoothies.

When we got to Hershey it was about 4:00 and everything closes at 5:00. That's been the norm for every place we've visited in PA, so we were expecting it. We weren't really there to sight see everything we could. We were just wasting time until we could go home. Plus, with two little kids, you can only last one hour anyway.

After feeding Noah and changing diapers (it really makes it easy to change a baby's diaper in your lap when they are only 19 inches long, btw) we were ready to take the tour of the "chocolate factory"! Why the quotes? Because it was not a factory. It was just a ride depicting a factory.

Behold! Pictures!

Chocolate World! Where you can buy the same chocolate you get in stores for double the price!

I am excited to see the cow behinds. Truly I am!

It looks as though Zack has on his cynical face, even though he wasn't the cynical one. I was the one asking throughout the "tour", "Where is the part where they add the wax? I don't see the part where they add the wax." Caleb just looks like we are about to go on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Do you feel his pain? Mike? Danny?

Maybe he was just concerned because we were about to go past the singing cows. Is it just me or do they look like inmates?

After exploring the grossly overpriced candy in the gift shop we drove home amidst the constant moaning of our 1 year old (he wasn't in pain or anything, it's just a thing he does when he's tired) and the crying/screaming of our newborn. Even the peace of Amish country couldn't soothe them. When we pulled up to the hotel I believe my words were, "You get the boy, I'll get the baby...see you on the other side." On the other side I think we had dinner at some point and then put the kids to bed. Can we go home yet?