Well, I had intended to post this yesterday, but oh well. Two entries today! Woo!

We left Connecticut fairly early in the morning, after hearing dire predictions of how long the trip would be. “Oh, I’ve done that. That’s a 12 hour drive, at least!” Maybe if you drive slow, I guess. It’s not like it’s a 700 mile drive. Still, we were anxious to get on the road early and make it to Pittsburgh before dark.

This drive was particularly easy and lovely. We drove out of Connecticut the same way we came in, but then we stayed north in New York, so rather than go back to Manhattan and cross the GW again, we used the Tappan Zee bridge to cross the Hudson. Did I tell you how beautiful that part of the drive was? Simply gorgeous.

The drive across New Jersey was actually quite lovely, too, and I had no idea that we were so high until we started to descend to cross the Delaware Water Gap. It felt like we were going downhill forever. Or at least an hour. Much of the trip was like that, though, where I noticed the downhill parts far more than I noticed the uphill parts. My brain’s just weird like that.

Driving across Pennsylvania probably should have been a little nostalgic for me, as a lot of my Mom’s family lives in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area where she grew up, but I didn’t remember it. Probably we were still too far north.

The hardest part about getting to Emma’s sister’s house in Pittsburgh was navigating between the interstate and her neighborhood. “Go through two stop signs…Take an easy right turn…Don’t go over the cliff.” Heh.

Brad and Jenny’s house is lovely, basically situated on top of a hill. It’s hard to tell that such a major industrial town as Pittsburgh is so close. They’re fairly close to the interstate, too, but you’d never be able to tell.

When we first arrived, Sam was very shy, running away to the other room to practice his guitar soon after we walked in the door. After it was apparent we weren’t leaving, I suspect. Soon, though, he discovered that uncle Arne makes for an excellent punching bag. As did Joe and Ben, actually. I wonder why that is? Probably because I play along at first, so then they think it’s a fun game. And it is, for a while…

Sam’s favorite game with me was to “cut” me apart with a magnet inside a plastic case that was slightly tapered at one end. The magnet was his knife, and he delighted in cutting off my hands (so I couldn’t tickle him), ears (so I couldn’t hear), lips (so I couldn’t talk), feet, etc. Happily for me I seem to have remarkable regenerative powers, because soon after he cut them off they grew back. Magic!

To kill some time until Emma’s sister got off work (she’s an ICU nurse), we thought that we’d take a drive around Pittsburgh and Brad could show us the sights. I thought it’d be fun, since I’d never been to Pittsburgh before, but I don’t think that Emma wanted to sit in a car much longer. Fortunately for her, as we were getting ready, somebody mentioned that there was an Ikea store nearby. Whoa. I had never been to an Ikea. I decided unilaterally that that was where we should go. So we did. And it was good.

What a freaking AMAZING place, that Ikea. First off, there’s a playroom for kids, with what appears to be decent security. There’s a giant ball pit and some other stuff for the kids to play with while their parents shop. Sam really likes the ball pit. Arne really likes the Ikea. We had a great time wandering through the store, looking at all of the fun stuff. We found one lamp in particular that our cats would have loved. So, you know those dangly cat toys, with a feather or a ball on a string, tied to a long pole? The ones our cats really love? Yeah, this lamp was basically that, but huge. The lamp itself is a chopped-off sphere made of thin fabric about two feet across, which hangs from a bent pole over a table, for instance. The pole, however, is nice and bendy, and I can just see our cats playing catapult with it. Well, I can see Keegan using it to launch Rory across the room, which Rory would probably love. Heh.

Dinner was at a local bar-and-grill-type place. I had a sliced steak sandwich with cole slaw and French fries, which is apparently the Pittsburgh way. Very tasty.

After dinner we played a few games with the boy, I think, then sent him to bed. He read “Go, Dog. Go!” to me and I read “Gerald McBoing Boing” to him. Very cute.

Coming tomorrow (or perhaps later tonight): The Tunnel-Bridge Song! With video goodness!