We Interrupt This Vacation Recap...

...to bring you the weekend....

And what a great weekend it was- after a rough start Friday (I was feeling under the weather) we were finally able to get under steam and get down to Hatteras. We stayed with our friends Brian and Matt, Matt's son and of course Neil.

Saturday brought awesome weather at the beach- 15 degrees cooler than in Richmond- and a fun day digging in the sand. We drove back today, stopping in Williamsburg where Erico humored me with Pierce's Pitt BBQ.

We'll be back with the play by play tomorrow.

Day 2 of vacation

So the second day of vacation was the Sampson family reunion. Sue organized it very well- everyone wore name tags identifying which branch of the family the person belonged to- definitely helped everyone figure out who everyone else was- there were about 35 Sampsons there- very impressive.

Here's a pic of Vake with one of his cousins- I think the family resemblance is pretty uncanny.

The family reunion was at Eric's Uncle Mark's lake cabin- absolutely gorgeous location.

Once the reunion was over, there was time for going out and walking at the sand dunes at Siltcoos Inlet- I think Eric and Vake had a great time. It was cold and a little rainy- you see that Vake was wearing his raincoat- and Eric was wearing his barn jacket- and it was basically 100 degree in Richmond this whole week.

Day 1 of Vacation- travel to the West Coast

Vake did so well on our first day of vacation- we left our house pretty early (those of you who know Eric know that he likes to be a total early bird to the airport). We arrived and had plenty of time to check in to our flight to Chicago.

The flight to Chicago was a piece of cake- we made it there in about an hour and fifteen minutes. Vake watched videos for most of the flight (that's the one true benefit of restricting t.v. access that I can see- they are FIRED UP to watch videos for hours at a time when you let them).

Unfortunately, we had a really really long layover in Chicago- I definitely wouldn't do it that way again- I think travel is just so busy in the summer that it was our only option. The flight to Portland was also easy- it was LONG and the DVD player batter gave up the ghost in hour 3 but Vake was perfectly happy to do other things.

Once we got to Portland and got our rental car, Vake was willing to snooze for part of the apr. 4 hour drive to Florence- we hit a little snag at the very end of the trip when the poor pumpkin got super carsick- so that was too bad- we showed up at the end of 16 hours of travel with a vomit covered Vakey and Mommy.

Have to say, if I had it to do all over again, the change that I would make would be to stop in Portland overnight then tackle the Portland-Florence leg the following am...

Home Again, Home Again

We're back from 10 days on the Oregon Coast...More pics and fun stuff to come!!!!

Homecoming Pics!!!!!

Look at this tiny little one- so glad to be home!!!!!
And the very proud daddio!!!

Headin' Home!!!

That's right- beating all expectations- Mary Frances is headed home today- SO EXCITING!!!! Good luck Anne and Dennis. Hope you all got enough sleep in your 30 or so years on this earth....

Mary Frances Making Progress

Anne got to hold her outside of the isolette last night!

What great news!