Vacation 2009 - part III - reunited with friends

One of the greatest things about facebook is that it reconnects you with people with whom you've completely lost touch and otherwise would probably have never found again.

Tricia and I became great friends in junior high and continued our friendship through high school. This is the first time we'd seen each other in about 12 years.

Tricia's 3 kids plus my 4.

Maria, also a junior high and high school friend, always sat behind me in homeroom by virtue of our last names (Vaughn and Viscuso). This is the first time I'd seen Maria in about 14 years!

Kim used to be our neighbor when we lived in Phoenixville. We were in each other's weddings, but the last time I saw her, I was pregnant with Christopher!

Kim's girls, Kaitlyn and Kristyn, were babies and toddlers when I knew them! They are holding their newest little sister, Abbie.

Here is Dave, a good friend from college days, holding his daughter (Mai An) and my daughter, Mary Grace.

All of the kids in this picture are Asian...the two on the outside just happen to look it!

Hien and I were also in each other's weddings and have thankfully kept in touch over the years without the help of facebook.

We met up with the Yohannans at a Chuck E Cheese's in Princeton, NJ. Of all the places to meet up in Princeton!!! - but it was pouring down rain and this place was a good half-way meeting point as well as fun for the kids (albeit too loud and distracting for any meaningful conversation)! Here is Jake with his 3 oldest kids, EJ, Josephine and Jesse.

Here is Jaya with their youngest, Noah.

The mommies with the babies...

The daddies with the babies. John and Jake were good friends throughout seminary, went to Israel together, and then served together at Trinity. Jake and Jaya are now serving in northern NJ, planting an ethnically Indian PCA church.

More high school friends - from left to right, Tricia's mom, Tricia, Janetta and Denise.

This was my first girls' night out in a LONG time!!! I went so crazy that I ordered a coffee at the bar. What's funny is that we graduated from high school 16 years ago and we all got carded that night!

Vacation 2009 - part II - Longwood Gardens

Ever since we discovered how close Longwood Gardens was to my mom's house 3 years ago, we have made a visit there a big priority every time we return to PA.

This time we took my sister, her two boys and a little girl that my sister watches during the week. It was quite a circus keeping track of all 7 kids!

I didn't pack enough cool-weather clothing, so my sister provided my kids with some hats and jackets. Were it not for the pink blankets, some might mistake Mary Grace for a baby boy!

Much to the dismay of my inlaws, Sarah wore Phillly Eagles hat to keep warm.

Cousins, Luke and Sarah, hanging out in the children's garden.

Elijah, checking out the water fountains in the children's garden.

Cousins, Elijah and Hannah, sitting on the bee throne.

Elijah, taking a load off.

Luke, posing for a picture in the conservatory.

John and me inside the conservatory.

3 strollers containing 4 of the 7 kids, and we still found ourselves chasing down kiddos!

Here we are making our way down a hallway in the conservatory...we were quite a noisy bunch!

Beautiful hydrangeas.

Columbine flower.

Dianthus flowers outside.

Foxgloves. I think Beatrix Potter draws and mentions these in her story about Jemima Puddleduck.

Mommy and Hannah in one of the tree houses.

Christopher checking out the Italian water gardens.

Sarah holding up her dried-up, brown, dead leaf that she found by the restrooms...lovely.

The lake by the tree house and Italian Water Gardens - so tranquil.

Mommy and Sarah in front of the Wisteria tree.

Wisteria trees. They smelled so heavenly.

Hannah sitting by the dianthus and yelling, "Pwetty fwow-yers!"

Paw Paw and Mary Grace taking a break from all the walking we did.

Vacation 2009 in pictures - part I

I've nearly given up blogging because it seems to take up so much time, but I thought I'd make a review of our vacation very easy on myself by simply posting pictures and then writing a short caption underneath each one. Pictures are a more interesting way to sum up a vacation than to simply write, "we went here...blah blah blah blah...then there...blah blah blah blah...and this happened, and that happened, and we saw so-n-so, blah blah blah..." We really did have a great time... Anyway, here are the pics:

Here is Paw Paw (my mom) so happy to have her grandkids with her!

After three 500mile drive days in our packed out minivan, Mary Grace was probably the happiest to get out of the confines of the carseat, sleep completely prostrate, and bounce around in the exersaucer.

The day after we got to PA, my sister came over with her two boys (Luke and Elijah) to play. This is Luke in the middle of saying, "Cheese!"

As you can see, Hannah slept hard after the long trip and I didn't have the energy to even brush her hair.

Luke and Mary Grace.

My kids in rapt attention as Aunt Melanie reads them a book.

Christopher and Mommy happy to begin our vacation OUTSIDE of the van!

...home again home again, jiggety jog...

After 4 weeks of vacation in Pennsylvania and 2 full days of driving, we have arrived home in the great state of Texas. Unpacking and getting the house back in order has proved to be a monumental task and is still underway. Hence, the brief blog post...but some pictures from vacation are soon to follow.

Hannah riding her tricycle

One good thing about hitching a uhaul trailer to the van is that we can bring the kids bikes with us. I wasn't planning on bringing Hannah's tricycle because she hadn't quite gotten the hang of using the pedals yet.  Thankfully, John piled it into the trailer along with the bikes and all of our other luggage because Hannah has figured out how to pedal during our first few days here!

A very long 3 days on the road...

We pulled out of our driveway this past Monday morning a little before 8 a.m. to begin our long drive to Pennsylvania. We thought and hoped that we could make the drive in 2 very full days, but soon realized after many stops that lasted longer than anticipated and then not even reaching our normal half-way point after the first day that we needed a third day to complete the journey. 

Looking back, I'm still trying to figure out how we could have saved time and expedited our rest stops. I guess having an additional baby in diapers, who also requires nursing and being fed baby food slowed us down a bit. The 2:1 children to parent ratio on top of that added some chaos and time. Our GPS didn't help either. There were several times when the GPS told us to go a route that was pretty far off the well beaten path, and we'd try it thinking,' well, maybe this way is faster', only to turn around and go back to the more familiar roads. That definitely took a big chunk of time out of the 2nd day's drive. Two adults and 4 children spending 2 nights in a hotel room with 2 queen size beds and a pack-n-play didn't give us a good night's sleep, so we were off to slow starts the mornings of the 2nd and 3rd days.

Compared to the first 2 days, today's drive through the beautiful state of Virginia, a small bit of West Virginia and Maryland and then the final 2+ hours of Pennsylvania went (mercifully) very smoothly and quickly. We arrived at my mom's house around 5:30 p.m. today, got the minivan and uhaul trailer unloaded, got a homecooked meal, and are already feeling settled for an extended vacation.

Mary Grace sitting up by herself...

She took a wee bit longer than her older siblings, but at 7 1/2 months, Mary Grace is sitting up unsupported for extended periods of time...and she's very happy about it.

Ice cream cones in the backyard

Google earth/sky and big bath tub...

If you've been following the blog for a number of years, you may have picked up that Christopher has had a long line of obsessions that began with flicking spring-bound door stoppers and drawer handles as a crawling baby, to bowl-spinning as a toddler, to choirs as a 3-4 year old, to dinosaurs as a 5 year old, and most recently outer space as a 6 year old.  What's interesting about each of these is that it completely consumes his imagination until he has 'mastered' or exhausted it and finds something else that captures his interest.  We really didn't do too much to encourage the first 2 very noisy obsessions, but we did feed his zest for choirs by exposing him to lots of choral music.  We also exhausted the dinosaur bookshelves at our public library on top of buying him several dino encyclopedias.  

We have now moved on to the astronomy bookshelves across the aisle and he is devouring them. Another thing he likes to do during free time is watch YouTube videos about planets, stars, galaxies and the universe.  A friend of ours told us about an application on Google Earth where you can switch to the sky and zoom in on different stars, planets and galaxies.  It is way cool.  I showed it to Christopher the other day and he is hooked.  The above picture shows him checking out one of the galaxies.

Now onto the youngest child: Mary Grace had her first official bath in the big tub.  She displaces too much water in the infant tub, so it was time to make the transition.  As you can see from the above picture, she thoroughly enjoyed it.

As soon as Sarah and Hannah saw her in the tub, they immediately wanted to join her.

Cheese!

The biggest sister with the littlest sister enjoying some fun in the tub.