Home Again!

The last two weeks we've been on the road visiting family.  We drove to see some cousins, then up to a family reunion, then to my sister's house, then to my in-laws'.  Seeing as we had no car in England, I've never been on a road trip whilst pregnant and the kids aren't used to long road trips. We'd driven up with them for Christmas, though, and learnt their limits, so this time we broke the trip up more, stopping at hotels along the way and then staying with family when we arrived. As it turns out, breaking it up was really good for me, too. I ended up driving the entire time because I get motion sick more easily when pregnant.  I have the ability to make myself motion sick whilst driving when pregnant, so having me drive made it less likely that I'd feel ill.

So, what else did I learn? My children have a holiday limit of about a week before asking to go home.  Of course, going from place to place every few days and meeting loads of family make for overwhelmed kids, even though they had fun.

I was also reminded of how much I love cooking my own food instead of eating out.  Of course we had home-cooked meals when staying its family, but when on the road of course we had to eat at restaurants.  Dear restaurants: salt is used as a flavour enhancer. If you cannot taste the real flavours of the food, you're using too much. Now, I know I like a lot less salt than many Americans and in fact I don't cook with salt; because of this, I'm sure I'm more sensitive to salt than many, and I find that I really can't tolerate much salt (all my college friends can now laugh at the irony, since I used to eat loads of salt).  Also, portion sizes are fairly ridiculous when I'm unable to take the rest with me because of being on the road. Oh well.  And of course not all restaurants are bad at this. This one, for example, was wonderful.

All in all, it was a nice holiday, though it's good to be back, too.