Photos from Virginia

We headed out to Virginia on 7/1 to spend a week with Tripp's family. His sister Elizabeth lives in Richmond and hosted a Harley & Helen Thompson family reunion. Four out of the five siblings and their families made the trip. There are tons of photos from the week, thanks in part to our spiffy new camera. That's right, we finally broke down and bought a really nice camera. There is one in particular Tripp has wanted pretty much all of his adult life so with his graduation this summer I agreed to let him go buy it as long as I didn't know how much he spent. The slide show above has only a small fraction of the photos we took but it gives you an idea of what we were up to.

On 7/3, Tripp, Kyle and Patrick took the train in to DC and spent time sight-seeing. He used our small camera so I'll let him upload those photos and do his own post.

On the 4th, Elizabeth invited all the extended family to come over. Aunts, Uncles, In-Laws, friends all made the trip to her house. We went to a parade in her neighborhood and spent the day hanging out with family. Tripp's Aunt Sue made her famous cheeseballs and brought one for each family. We simply didn't have enough time to eat all of ours before we left and heard that after we were on the road, Elijah found it and told everyone that if they needed him he would be in the house devouring our cheeseball (he's 12).

On the 5th, all the siblings and grandparents took Trey to the DC Temple. He is leaving for his mission in August so this was his first time going through.

Really, we just hang out. Elizabeth was a marvelous host and themed the food for each day: Fiesta Day, Taste of Virginia Day, Healthy Day, Fourth of July, Thompson Favorite Day. The kids played outside for hours...duck duck goose (Abbie's first time), races in the backyard, the park, swimming, basketball, countless hours of Guitar Hero, Bowling & Horseshoes on the Wii. Trey has a small (I'm being kind) obsession with "The Pretender" some crazy TV show from the 90s. He found it online and Pat hooked it up to the TV and we all watched it one night. The volume wasn't the best so we all had to be quite. Poor Laura didn't know and came downstairs asking questions about Smores, the show, etc. Needless to say, the poor thing got beat to a pulp.

I hope my kids came home with lovely memories of their time with their grandparents, aunts & uncles and cousins. Thanks Elizabeth & Wes for being such gracious hosts and good sports.