Ah Vacation

Prior to leaving the guys needed a pre-vacation haircut, as you can tell John has had his and now it was going to be dad's turn, but we couldn't resist a picture before they traded places.

This was the very first time that we got to travel to North Carolina to visit with Mark's family and not have to tour the inside of any hospitals. John did great, he threw up one time on the way there and then had the time of his life. He's still asking about the cousins.



With two days of driving to do he had to find ways to entertain himself in the back seat. He was a cheerful traveler and learned lots of new things like how to throw things from the back seat to the front, how to reach everything in the back seat and move it, open it, pitch it, play with it or eat it. We read lots of books, watched some movies, enjoyed some music and finally made it to Papa's house.







John absolutely loved getting to play with his cousins. He is the second youngest of 12 cousins, the oldest one is 13 and the youngest is 2. He had so much fun racing around in circles with David and would stop in front of him so that David could ram him, boys are certainly boys. He did later come off the porch at a bad angle and take a header on the concrete but it didn't take long and he was back out racing in circles again.

Mark and I had a very enjoyable game of Risk with some of the older cousins, and the girls kicked butt, if we hadn't had to stop the game to go eat I'm sure that Savannah would have taken over the world.

We stayed most of the time with Mark's next older brother and his delightful wife and family. It was so nice to have so much time to visit and get to know them better, and John was so excited to be staying in a house with 6 cousins. He woke up most mornings at 5 or 6, signing to me 'wake-up cousins, wake-up cousins' as fast as his little fingers and hands could sign it. He learned to bump down all the stairs on his bottom and was so excited to play with the kids.

We are always impressed to be around so many kids and so many nice kids at that, it was a pleasure to be in the midst of family.

The reason for the timing of this visit was a close family wedding that Mark was preaching at. The wedding went well, the reception was wild, or rather John was wild at the reception as he seemed to think that he owned the dance floor. He was a bit timid getting out there to start with, but soon was running in circles and figure eights and laughing and smiling and making sure that there wasn't room out there on the dance floor for adults.



One last picture, I could have taken a million but I was too busy having fun too. This is the 3 youngest cousins, all boys, one with more fashion sense than the others, all having a good time.

So many things happened, and so much fun was had it's nearly impossible to list all of it, suffice it to say that we are looking forward to our next visit!