Fun with Family

I’ve been MIA from the blogosphere again. July has been an eventful month…

Y’all know my family is quite scattered, right? That’s why you don’t see many family photos here.

Shannon (our eldest) is in San Diego. Amy (middle child) lives near Seattle with her husband, TJ, and our grand kids. Eric (youngest) and his wife, Kelsey, are currently in Spain where Eric, a budding culinary artist, is doing a summer internship at a resort in Seville.

On July, 1, Amy and TJ, arrived at our house for a visit. Our family has developed an affinity for silly selfies.

Hubby started it. He took my selfie stick along on his Four Corners Tour, and, upon reaching a different family member’s location, he’d send a group selfie via text to announce his arrival.

 

This next pic isn’t a good one, technically, but it makes me laugh.

We all usually laugh a lot when we’re together. 🙂

If you’re wondering about the grand kids, they were with another set of grandparents. Until Friday, July 17.

They were only here for the weekend. After a whirlwind of activity with that other branch of their family (on TJ’s side), I think they enjoyed the less-active weekend at our place.

We all just sorta hung out on Friday afternoon/evening.

This next picture, taken when I came downstairs at the end of my work day,  makes me laugh.

There’s a floor full of Legos. The kids are watching a movie. Joey is enjoying the “little sofa” (aka dog bed) I made. And K is looking for a place to sit, since her sofa is occupied.

Later, after I had walked the dogs, I suggested we all walk down to the caboose (at the Warrenton Branch Greenway) so I could get a more-recent photo of the kids in that spot.

They’ll usually pose nicely for me, because I always let them follow the “nice pics” with silly ones.

Hubby thought it would be a good idea to put the dogs in the pic, too. After about 15 takes, this is the only one that came remotely close to having both dogs look toward the camera.

Remember the caboose I mentioned?

After that, we all walked on the trail for a bit. Joey was “walking” Belle while Gaige was in charge of K.

The girls don’t get to run much, so they were having a blast. Can you see Belle, in front, smiling? I’m pretty sure she was thinking, “I wish I had a little boy!” Meanwhile, Joey was thinking, “I wish I could take Belle home with me.”

Afterward, we all hung out in our back yard. All that peaceful togetherness lasted about three minutes.

Saturday, which is when the lasted heat wave really kicked into high gear, was quite a bit less eventful.

We did go see the Minions movie in 3D. Everyone was rather underwhelmed. The 3D part was cool, but the movie itself just wasn’t very good.

We walked around town a little bit, but spent most of the remainder of the day in the air-conditioned house. Oh, and Hubby smoked some baby back ribs for dinner. They were his best yet!

Here’s a pic of Brianna posing with an outdoor thermometer. See why we chose to stay indoors? And that was during a cooler part of the day.

We had to come up with something interesting and indoors to do with the kids on Sunday. Hubby suggested visiting a cave. I immediately thought of Shenandoah Caverns, which is where I saw this cool frog statue (great family photo op!) and the American Celebration on Parade.

Sadly, the frog statue was being renovated. But the cavern was open for business.

Shenandoah Caverns is supposedly the only cavern in VA (there are quite a few) that has an elevator. The temperature is a constant 54 degrees (that’s about 12 Celsius), which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Nearby Luray Caverns is famous for a couple of formations that look like sunny-side-up eggs. Knowing this, I found it amusing that Shenandoah Caverns is famous for its bacon formations.

 

I’ll save most of the cavern pics for a potential future post, but wanted to share this one. I kept seeing faces and other images in the rocks.

After the cavern tour, we went to see the parade exhibits at American Celebration on Parade.

I think that place is fun.

The kids weren’t impressed. All the boys wanted to do was run around and see stuff that made NOISE (some of the floats move, but don’t include music). Brianna just thought it was stupid (and probably childish since she’ll be 15 in December).

 

 

The kids know that TJ, their Dad, likes sending me silly pics, which I love receiving. So they were more than happy to find a spot to pose for a pic for me to send their Dad.

I think they chose pretty well. Since the kids were less than impressed, and we were all hungry, we decided to skip the final building and head toward home.

All in all, it was a fun visit. I wish we’d been able to do more outdoors, though, because they’re all very active kids.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to go to Washington State next year for some fun in their neck of the woods.