Reuniting

As I mentioned, we just returned from a trip to Charlottesville where we attended our ten-year college reunion. I love that Zach and I both went to UVA because we both love it and love to visit, we have lots of common friends from college, and our memories of that time include each other. So, we were both excited about reuniting with lots of old friends, although, particularly in Zach's case, some of the people he really wanted to see weren't able to make it. He joked that the only one who came from his pledge class was Peter...who he sits next to every day at work.

Since Carol and Bill live in Charlottesville, we had the perfect place to stay and the perfect babysitters. However, all weekend I still felt like I was pulled in so many directions. While many of our college friends have kids, very few brought them to the reunion. And, since our kids are still young, they weren't really able to participate in many reunion activities, which mean they stayed home with the grandparents a lot of the time. Which is great, except that it made me feel guilty--that's a lot for Carol to handle, and I felt bad not spending more time with the kids. (Bill can't help for reasons that are too long to get into here.) We had lots of fun catching up with our friends, but then had to get up at the crack of dawn each morning to deal with the kids. As my mom says, you can't hoot with the owls if you're going to soar with the eagles. Or some such thing. Basically, it sucks to get up really damn early when you've been out the night before pretending like you're still in college. (To give credit where credit is due, Zach got up most mornings with our early bird, Julia. Several days he took her out to Bodo's, my favorite bagel place, and then brought stuff back for everyone. Wonderful husband!)

So while the visit was good, it just wasn't the carefree time that I was hoping for. Traveling was difficult. The cat peed in my suitcase on our second night there. A heat wave made it hotter in Virginia than it was in Alabama. Julia screamed bloody murder any time I had to leave her...it even got to the point that she would lose it if I tried to leave the room to go to the bathroom. I'm glad we went--not only for the reunion, but also just because we need to get to Charlottesville more often. While it's challenging to do so, I want Will and Julia to visit their grandparents.

Enough complaining. Here are some pictures from when we took the kids to play on the Lawn. They seemed to enjoy that except for when they got in a screaming match (like nothing I've ever heard them do) right in front of a huge tour group. Zach and I just started laughing hysterically because we didn't know what else to do. I guess that kind of sums up our trip...sometimes you just have to laugh and be thankful that you're all together.