Disclaimer: I wrote this post while on Benadryl.
We had such wonderful visits with family last month. All year long, we look forward to seeing family. An while I get to take trips to New Jersey a few times a year, we only get to Virginia three times at the most – this year it was twice.
Our trip started out with us tying the hood of our Jetta down with Nick’s Honor’s Tassels from his college graduation. The latch on his hood was broken and we weren’t able to fix it prior to leaving, but don’t worry the car sported the yellow cords in style. We made our trip in pieces, NJ, VA, and NJ again.
It was back to school week in NJ, so things were very busy, but we found time to dye my gorgeous sister’s hair.

So lovely.

Jonny helped Nick to secure the hood a little better before we headed back on the open road.
We kept our NJ time very simple, we visited with our close friends, ate dinner with my family, stayed up late talking with Jon and Ainsley. Listened to Josh tell stories about the culture of Valet parking. Such special treasured moments!
In Virginia we did much the same, except with more Dessert! (oh my did we have desserts a plenty). We went kayaking one day and Nick and I tried a double kayak which was interesting. By the end we had learned how to work in sync, but it was much harder than I thought it would be. Mike and Karen had a Canoe and they seemed to have a much easier time of it.
We spent one day at Maymont Park and we saw:

Farm Animals

Birds

And a Butterfly.

We had fun.

But were pretty hot and tired by the end. No worries, Rita’s took care of that!

Lindsay and I had the adventure of highlighting Karen’s hair (maybe Karen was the true adventurer). Mike and Joey helped cut foils and make runs to the drugstore for us, while Nick and Mom W. picked Nick’s car up from being repaired.

Jack of course was thrilled to have his family around him.
We snapped a few family photos.

The J’s

The W’s – doesn’t Karen’s hair look great?

Mom W with the girls – the chiquitas were kinda done with having their picture taken.

Grandma H with her girls.

Us of course.


We have these cute pictures of us with Hannah, but none with Ella. Don’t worry though, Ella and I had tons of fun sneaking up on Uncle Nick while he was working on his computer. Lots of giggly girl time!

Here’s a pretty one of Ella – she looks like a china doll!

And one of Hannah too – fresh out of the pool.
Then it was back to NJ to spend a little more time with these folks…

…and the rest.
But don’t think we made it without an adventure. As we passed Philadelphia, Nick and I heard a strange clunking noise and pulled to the side of the highway to discover that a bolt had fallen out of our front right brake. We called AAA immediately, but their main line wasn’t working. Finally we hacked our way into their system, and they told us that they could tow us anywhere within 100 miles. Since my parent’s house was within that range, we were able to ride in the tow truck the rest of the way home. It was slightly bizarre, but not awful if you can believe it. We only arrived 1/2 hour late for dinner. Josh drove Nick around until they found a bolt that would work to hold Nick’s brake on (although we still need to buy the OEM part)…thanks Josh! We stayed for another day and then headed home with hearts full and ready to start our last year at Gordon Conwell.