Upstate Roadtrip

We decided to take a spring break trip since our summer plans have been tweaked a bit :)  Marcus and I had been talking about seeing Upstate New York basically since we moved here, but we never jumped on the opportunity.  So the few days we had became a now-or-never opportunity.  

First we drove up to Rochester.  That was kind of our home base for most of the weekend.  We stayed at a hotel just outside the city so we could easily get to Rochester and Palmyra.  Though our first stop was a Marcus craving... Texas Roadhouse :)

Chase enjoyed the cinnamon butter on the rolls!

Not sure why he insisted on the fork.

He was celebrating both the rolls and the dancing servers.

Chase was a little crazy at the restaurant, but at least he ate :)

The next day was raining, but luckily we had planned ahead for that.  We took Chase to an awesome museum for kids in Rochester that had all kinds of toys and activities.  I have a separate post on that because we took a bunch of pictures.  Chase had a lot of fun -- and so did Marcus!

Later that afternoon when we were headed back to the hotel, Marcus had a jeans accident...  His current favorite pair tore a good seven inches.  Thankfully we weren't going somewhere right then.  And we had the flexibility to add in a stop at the Waterloo Outlets at the end of the trip to get Marcus some new pants :)  I know this is horrible, but it was hilarious!

Back at the hotel, Marcus and Chase went swimming.  At first Chase was really nervous, but then he warmed up to the water.  He loved the pool.  He wanted to stand on the edge and jump in, but he never quite figured out the whole jumping part.

Nervous about the water

Happy swimmers

Chase wouldn't let go of Marcus' neck, which Marcus loved :)

Jumping in the pool

In motion

Practicing kicking to swim to the edge

Trying again

"Jumping" quickly became his favorite game

They worked a lot on kicking -- I think Chase enjoyed the splashing

Chase wasn't happy to get out of the water, but we were able to bribe him with cookies near the hotel entrance.  That definitely worked!

Eating his cookie

We went to a well-known Rochester restaurant called Dinosaur BBQ.  We all enjoyed it, and Chase loved coloring a dinosaur.

Marcus enjoyed reading in every spare minute he found.  This was how you could find him if we were in the room.

The next day we went over to Palmyra to see church history sites.  That also has its own post.  We spent a lot of the day visiting the area and having tours from missionaries.  

On the way back to Rochester, we stopped at a local farm.  It was still too cold to have the animals out to pet and feed, but they had ice cream and a big jumping pillow thing.

He wanted birthday cake, and they happened to have birthday cake ice cream!

Watching Chase play

Chase stayed in the corner next to the jumping pillow and played in the sand

The next day we drove east to Niagara Falls.  Marcus loved photographing the water, so that is another separate post.  We spent the night there and drove back to the city by way of the outlet mall.  The drive was beautiful -- it followed along some of the Finger Lakes, going through cute towns and farm land.  It made us want to come back and see the area in all the different seasons.