We had a wonderful time in Roanoke. It was so nice to see everyone and let the kids get to know all of their family members on the east coast. I used to think that once all of the cousins grew up, that Roanoke would no longer be the same. I was completely wrong. There's now a second wave of cousins that live a lot like we did when we were young.
We originally planned to tour around Roanoke and visit several sites in Virigina. What we ended up doing was spending all of our time with family and swimming at Aunt Joyce's pool. The kids swam for hours and hours every day. They also ended up sleeping over at different family members houses almost every night. I think Madison spent the night with us maybe twice the whole entire trip.
I am so grateful for such loving and accepting family members. They accepted everyone into the family without missing a beat. Ireland had a blast with Heather's son Justin. They are the same age (5) and Ireland was convinced that Justin was his only cousin. When we were at the pool he would ask where his cousin was. When we told him that all of the thirty kids (not overestimating) in the pool were his cousins, he would shake his head and say that only Justin was his cousin.
All of the kids seemed to find someone that they bonded with that was close to their age. Anna and I used to do a lot together and it was funny that Tyler and Anna's daughter were buddy buddy too.
It was also great to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa. They are doing well. Grandma struggles with her mobility, but overall they are pretty dang good for their age. Grandpa is 90 and Grandma is 87. I hope that I am doing as well as Grandpa is at 90 if I make it that long.
It was fun to hear their stories and to have them interact like they did when we were kids. Grandpa loves to tell his altered stories i.e. of their running off to get married, and many other things and Grandma tells him he is full of it and tells us what really happened. They make a great comedy act. The last night we were there a ton of family came down and we got Grandma and Grandpa to tell us stories from their past. It was so much fun. I heard a ton of things I had never heard before. We got a lot of it on video thanks to Panasonic.
It was sad to leave. It will always be home for me even though we moved to Denver when I was twelve. Several of our kids begged us not to go. They loved the fact that they had so many kids their age to interact with. It still is its own little safe haven from the world.
