Month of roadtrips

Thursday, August 27th, 2009 | Playgrounders, baby, family, travel

You know, for someone who is no longer working a 40 hour job plus choir, committees, and gaming, I’ve been really lax on this goshdarned thing. Which is kind of sad, because late June and July were pretty interesting.

The last weekend of June was the Third Annual “Southeast Trogland” Giant in the Playground Meetup. The group was smaller than last year, but the number seemed to work better. Less chaos, less drama, more fun. Of course, I wasn’t technically a “local” anymore; I carpooled with Zeb and Alarra. (It was the last week of school at the JDC and William had to work.) All in all a great time, and I got to meet a few new GiTP forumites. Which is all the more interesting considering I haven’t really done more than peek at the forums in a year. But Playgrounders are almost always fun, no matter how you meet them. Zeb, Alarra, and Ceika are relatively close to me here in VA, but I haven’t gotten together with them yet. Zeb and Alarra are brand new parents, and I’ve only got 4 more weeks to go, so maybe once baby chaos settles down we can hang out. There’s even a mini-meetup in the works for October.

For July 4 we drove over to Smith Mountain Lake, VA, to spend about a week at William’s grandparents’ house. Apparently the area has become a popular place to build vacation houses since Nana and Granddad built their retirement home on the lake years ago, but they still manage to have a nice peaceful house under the trees. It was my first time meeting them, so I was nervous, but they’re really delightful. They met during the Second World War – he was in the US military and she the British. They wrote letters back and forth for a long while and eventually she came over and they married. And now they’re possibly the cutest little old couple I’ve ever met. Sadly we couldn’t see the fireworks from their house, but we did watch the Washington, DC, display on TV. (Not quite the same, I know, but it had to do.)

The following weekend we drove up to William’s mom’s for a baby shower. Nana and Granddad were there, and so were Lisa and her family. We spent one morning at Hershey’s Chocolate World. The whole place is really nothing more than a tourist trap designed to give you a sugar high and make you want to buy chocolate, but with the kids it was fun and I got to buy some t-shirts for my parents. Jan had tons of really wonderful food and we went to a nice, casual restaurant for the shower. The guys stayed through lunch and some of the silly shower games. Colin even won the game where you guess how round I am. After that I was on my own in a room full of barely-familiar women, but it was fun.

The weekend of July 18th we flew down to Florida for another baby shower hosted by Aunt Rue. It was good to see all the aunts and cousins down there again, even if it was kind of brief. Rue gave a great shower. Amy, Gibson and Alyce flew down, and we got to spend some time with William’s friend Mike and my old friends the Eastlicks. William also got to meet my grandma for the first time, as well as my Uncle Rick and cousin Cookie. A few of my aunts were disappointed that he didn’t go to the shower, but we’re hoping to go down again at Christmas, so they’ll get to meet then. We don’t want to overwhelm the poor guy; my family is much larger than his.

And that’s pretty much all the travel I’m allowed until the little dude is here. The Florida trip kind of pushed my “no-fly” cutoff, but since my TN doctors never told me what that cutoff was and I had to make plans, oh well. (I had trouble with that office. Don’t get me started.) Four more weeks and hopefully I will no longer have indigestion that keeps me up and blogging until 1am.