Easter 2024

[garrett-sutton]

Drove to my parents on Saturday before Easter to spend the whole week back east. We made a trip to my sister in-laws on Monday and came back Tuesday. Will be leaving to go back on Easter Monday

[garrett-sutton]

The drive from WI: Rough night for Gwen before we left. We got on the road from WI at 8 am. Fairly easy driving. Gwen did great. Slept on and off and would get a bit fussy when she was getting close to eating. Grace was able to comfort her in the back a lot of the time. Had a major blowout before we got to the first rest stop but she managed. Rest stops got progressively easier. Nice weather. Looked up Indiana and Ohio i90 service plazas and just spaced them about 150-200 miles apart. Worked well for Gwen to eat, us to get food and to gas up the car. Arrived at my parents by about 9:30 PM.

[garrett-sutton]

Palm Sunday

• mass first thing
• nice day. Got to run an old route
• cousin and her kids plus granny came for dinner
• super cute seeing her 3 year old interact with Gwen and the 10 month old being a lot of fun

[garrett-sutton]

Monday:

• run and get ready to leave for MD
• drive to MD to visit Maddie and the rest of Grace's family
• pretty easy drive with limited traffic. Gwen did great until the last ~15 minutes. Grace was able to console her until we got to the house. After some food, she was all set.
• We spent the afternoon hanging out. Maddie+ Connor were working late. Grace's parents were there and then her brothers came up from DC.
• Darts, a late dinner, got Gwen to sleep and some more darts before hitting the hay (very tired)
  • steak dinner was really good
• cold night in the house. Gwen definitely was waking up some because she was cold. 63 is just lower than what she's used to (and her mom too)

[garrett-sutton]

Tuesday

• hung around the house with Maddie and Grace's mom for the morning
• Dave and Henry were there until about 9 am when they had to go back to school
• we went to confession as the nearby Saint Anthony shrine
  • sort of an interesting experience. Churning through holy week confessions. Different from other experiences I've had.
• went to a local park where Grace ran while ML + Maddie pushed Gwen
• came home and dinner got going, played some games
• after dinner, Gwen ate and we hit the road
• snagged some Sheetz pb hot chocolate on the way
• got back to my parents by 10 pm
• Gwen did really good on the drive. It just took her a bit to fall asleep. She has a really good day after a bit of a rough night. She played really really hard with all of Grace's family and seemingly had a blast.

[garrett-sutton]

Good Friday 3/29

• Jessy and the girls came over in the morning
• Aunt Lori, Uncle Greg and Rachel also came over around dinner
  • Gwen rolled from front to back !!
• Went to Good Friday liturgy for the first time in a while. Have always been working in the past years. It was nice to go to

[garrett-sutton]

Easter monday Left my parents by 8:30 am Arrived home at 8:10 pm Lots of rain Gwen slept a lot after a sorta bad night of sleep

[garrett-sutton]

Gwen generally

• showed signs of growing a lot (sitting upright basically on her own, very expressive, happy with everyone she was with, sitting in the play seat thing)
• did not sleep well at night all week. Interesting that it could be sleeping next to us again. Or an unfamiliar place. Or something else entirely.

[garrett-sutton]

Take homes:

• Gwen traveled really well
• Gwen did really well meeting people
  • she had a ton of stimulation all week long
• It was a really nice trip
• Less stress than traveling to NY, but that's likely due to Gwen being 3 months older. It was nice to have flexibility with driving. Not needing to feel hurried by public transit schedule but Gwen is a lot more flexible now that she was then
• Great to see all of the people that we got to see

[garrett-sutton]

Outline:

• Section on travel details
• subsection of Gwen traveling
• section on Gwen and her interactions with people