Hurricane Irene=Hershey, PA

When it became obvious that the hurricane was heading straight for Long Island we decided it was a perfect weekend to take a vacation. We couldn't go far because Jason had to work on Monday so we decided to go back to Hershey, PA. We took the kids there 3 years ago and had a lot of fun so we decided to go back while we were only 3 hours away. The kids and I left Friday morning and Jason met up with us Friday night after he finished work. We were so glad that he had the weekend off. They ended up evacuating his hospital the next morning, because it is located in the flood zone. We live further north on the island so there were no +evacuations where we live. We drove home Sunday evening after the hurricane/tropical storm had passed through. New Jersey was a mess from the hurricane, they were hit really hard. Roads were flooded out and trees were fallen on others. We had to take so many detours to get home, I got very stressed out. We would stop and ask people which roads to take, but everyone was as clueless as us because so many of the roads were blocked off due to damage. They are still trying to get things cleaned up there, it makes me thankful that our home and neighborhood wasn't hit as hard. When we drove into our neighborhood there were trees down that blocked a few roads, but nothing serious.This is pretty much the only damage done to our property by Hurricane Irene. Not to down play the hurricane by any means because we know it affected many people and their homes. We just felt very blessed that the only damage we came home too was a few fallen branches. Many of our ward members were without power for a week. Including the church, so church was canceled for 2 weeks.




We had a great time at Hershey's Chocolate World. Our favorite things were the ride that tells how chocolate is made, packaging Hershey kisses, and walking around the big chocolate store.




As much fun as the chocolate factory was the kids were even more delighted to sit at the pool and swim.

My poor baby Kash got the croup the first night there and it got so bad that Jason ended up taking him the ER. They gave him a steroid that made him much better. The poor little guy is prone to croup he has always gotten it while Jason was out of town previously though so I was glad to have Jason there with me this time.