Last Week of Summer Break

Sisters.

 Visiting the Amtrak station in Manassas.

 At the Manassas courthouse, where 50 years after the Civil War, the president and a bunch of soldiers from both sides met for peace there at the site where it all began (Battle of Bull Run).

 Charlie and three of his favorite things: water towers, trains, and green!

 Danny loved sitting out in the grass for an hour one cool evening.

 Cute baby!

 Dress-up time. Grace and Charlie are a motorcycle gang.

 Fun with glowsticks.

 Danny the Jedi.

 My, what a big head you have!

 So dang cute!

 Cute brothers!

 Grace making meatballs.

 Alice avoiding making meatballs.

Exploring in the back yard.

Paul's Trip to LA

 Fun lunch I made for the kids one day.

 Danny at the doctor.

 Fancy Alice is too cool to get her picture taken.

 Cute sisters. Alice is wearing all clothes that Grace just grew out of.

 Daddy's out of town - who's gonna fix my broken space shuttle?

 Experimenting with facepaint. Rainbow lips.

 And arms.

 Grace started me as a snow princess, but then decided to see if she could make me look sick. Not sure what the neighbors thought when we went out to the playground like this...

 Grouchy Grace.

 Cute sisters. Alice happy to have her glasses finally fixed!

 Paul with the 60-inch telescope.

 The 100-inch telescope.

 Dome for the 100-incher.

 Haze over LA.

 Paul and the telescope. Taken on his iphone by a professional LA photographer!

 View from Mt. Wilson.

 At sunset.

 Paul is so handsome!

 I feel like Alice looks so grown up.

 Cute brothers!!!

 Sweet Grace.

 I did crazy hair day on the girls one day.

 Typical Charlie all week long.

Our first fruit from our garden! We don't get much sun back there, and lot of our plants gave up long ago, so we didn't even try to make sure our garden got watered while we were gone for 3 weeks. But we came back and had this full-sized cucumber, with a few more about half that size! It was delicious. The carrots, obviously, were a bust.

The Long Road Home

 On Sunday, we slept in a Marriott in Denver for free! (There was some confusion with our priceline reservation, so they fixed it, and refunded us too!) Paul and I relaxed in the hotel hot tub that evening since the baby monitor reached. On Monday, we drove all day to Kansas to Justin's/Kelsey's. Jude soon came into the living room announcing a wedding.

 Alice and Miles: the happy couple, complete with tape rings.

 Monopoly with Grace, Jude, and Miles. We had fun visiting with J/K that evening.

 Tuesday morning, we drove to Independence to see our good friends from New Mexico, Sam and Kim Fairbanks.

 The kids didn't really remember each other, but had a lot of fun playing on the playground together. Kyi, Zek, Charlie, Grace, Danny, Alice, Ben, Eli, Julie.

We met Justin for lunch at Stroud's Pan Fried Chicken. Really good food! Justin was nice to take a long lunch break on a very busy week.

 Then we met up with Kelsey/kids in Kansas City at the Hallmark mall.

 Kaleidoscope was really fun! Charlie.

 Abel.

 Glow in the dark room.

 Danny in the dark.

 Then across the street to the really cool mall. Huge Lego people!

 Most of us took naps on the drive home, then Kelsey got out her air brushes and painted faces.

We had a great bratwurst cookout for dinner. Once the kids were in bed, some of us went to get donuts, etc. More fun visiting that night.

 Wednesday we drove 13 hours to the Malones. We put the kids right to bed, then visited/ate with Sarah and Matt. Thursday morning we left Henry in Jack's capable hands, and went to Matt's office. Matt did my bridge prep and put on the temporary crowns, then did a quick x-ray on the other side of my mouth because I'd recently had a slight toothache. There was an abscess, and I need a root canal:( Back to WV for Labor Day and more dental work:( We immediately drove home from there, after 22 days on the road. We arrived around 4 and unloaded the car. Paul took some kids to get a few groceries, while Grace and I unpacked. We ate, unpacked more, started laundry, made to-do lists, and relaxed.

On Friday, Paul found us a great head board in the neighbor's trash pile! I grocery shopped and ran errands all morning. Then we made pizza and cookies with the kids, and watched High School Musical. Paul and I got a bunch of work done that evening.

On Saturday, we went school shopping, the kids played outside, etc. In the evening, Paul and I had a date eating dinner together and playing Ticket to Ride.

So glad to be home!