Virginia Vacation 2018

We made it to Virginia! Despite all of the uncertainty of this year, we were thrilled to be able to continue our annual tradition of escaping the Texas heat to enjoy the Virginia heat. This vacation came at the sweet spot between my FINAL DAY of radiation and BEFORE I needed to return to MD Anderson for an MRI and chemotherapy instructions. It was a vacation in many forms - and allowed me to pretend I'm not sick for awhile.

Our first destination was the Northern Neck at my parent's lovely river estate house. I flew alone with the kids and was joined by my brother, sister-in-law, their baby bump and two enormous golden retrievers for the first couple of nights. Then we were additionally joined by our former neighbor/great friend Jenn who traveled alone with her three children to spend a few nights with us on the water. It was a blast! 

For the first time in months I broke out my nice camera to get some s'more-making photos. 

Grammy was the keeper of the sweets - which was a good job considering my kids would eat the entire bag of marshmallows if allowed. 

Alex approves! He loves s'mores!

Look at how happy my mom is! It's been a long time since I wrote about it, but she is also going through a persistent cancer struggle of her own. After fighting her cancer four times, four different ways over the course of four years, she came to Houston this year to pursue treatment at MD Anderson. This treatment was the most cutting-edge, technologically advanced treatment available and took her from having detectable tumors to being completely cancer-free in 30 days. It was a horrific 30 days, with continuing fatigue and other lingering side-effects, but here she is 2.5 months post-treatment hosting multiple families with lots of little, energetic children, and making s'mores on a fire pit. I call that a win!

Here's our little (more accurately, young. He's not exactly little...) firecracker. He doesn't sit still, he doesn't play gently, and he is one of the cutest little ones I've ever come across. We are lucky that my parents had a long training exercise with our kids over the last few months so that they knew exactly what they were getting into with our visit.

Gretchen and Alex had a blast with their buddy Henry. He holds borderline celebrity status in our house. 

Then we had the good fortune of being in town for my brother and sister-in-law's baby shower! It was such a joy meeting their friends, and celebrating our future niece! Yes, that golden retriever was on their baby registry. Yes, it was enormous. Yes, I thought it was a bit creepy. But the kids ADORED it! We had lots of fun staying in Richmond at my brother's lovely home with his family. 

After the shower weekend, we pivoted and spent the next week with Jon's family in another part of Virginia. What a beautiful state that can have some many lovely destinations! 

My mother-in-law arranged for a family photography session at the end of our visit, the photos were beautifully done! This series was my favorite - both because our family photo is great and because a few seconds later Alex decided he was mad and didn't want to participate anymore. It was classic.

We took a tour of the Caverns at Natural Bridge and got to see some beautiful, underground formations. The kids really enjoyed it - especially the part where they turned out the lights (to demonstrate what the first cave explorers experienced) and Alex's Star Wars sweatshirt glowed like the sun.

Lightening bug capturing was another huge hit! They stayed alive and glowed for a few nights!

We spent the 4th of July in Lexington, VA and enjoyed their town bike parade (Halle and Alex had lots of fun even if their faces don't show it).  We had a great time enjoying every single person in our immediate families - I can't remember the last time we saw EVERYONE in such a short period of time! This was truly a vacation from home, and from reality - I was able to nap almost every day, our kids had fun day after fun day for a full two weeks and I had lots and lots of extra hands to help shoulder the responsibility of life!