Another Short Visit

My mom made a monthly trip to our house when Eric was born, but now with Dad not being able to travel very easily, she can't really visit at all, so we're going to try to visit regularly. This weekend was also Patrick's and my 25th college reunion. We haven't been able to go to the reunion in about 10 years because of the kids' activities. As it was, we drove in late on Friday night since we had to get home from work and school first. We left Natalie with her friend Margot and Margot's parents so she could go to a school academic competition. Eric missed his last soccer game of the season.

We didn't get to spend too much time with my parents. I'll detail our college reunion details in a later blog post. Patrick and I spent Saturday doing reunion stuff and Eric spent the day with his grandparents. He was spoiled, of course.

My Mom gave him a Star Wars Lego toy which consisted of a Republic Assault Ship and the planet Coruscant. He was in heaven, of course. In this picture, we are about to head home and Mom gave him his own bag of snacks to share. In the plastic bag he has two bags of Doritos, two bags of Cheetos, a partial loaf of sweet bread, and a bowl of mango complete with a fork. He carried that bag around the house as we were getting stuff ready to go and as Patrick was packing the van.

Alex was reluctant to go on this trip because he wanted to spend time with his friends, which is what he tries to do on every free weekend. We don't know his friends' parents as well as we know Margot's parents, so we didn't feel right making anyone else responsible for him and then leaving town.

To make him feel better about coming with us, I enticed him with a trip to the outlet mall with my sister Melissa. He actually seemed excited when I introduced this idea to him. He loves to shop as much (or more) than Melissa does. He bought two more pairs of shoes and many more pairs of socks. This boy has more shoes than I do.

I haven't gotten a picture of my parents in a while. I tried to get one with my Dad in it also, but he was busy and didn't come out until we were headed out of the door. Eric is so good about pictures and when Patrick took some pictures of Mom and me, he wanted to get in the picture too. I hope we have many more opportunities to take pictures in the future. In fact, we'll be back for our Thanksgiving visit in a little more than a week.