travelswithminis

The first week of July we went on a two week trip, along the way we decided to take an extra day or two to detour and see a couple of friends.

It is no secret that you will meet some of the greatest people while you are in the military, the same is true for military children and now with all of the communications technology it is so easy for us to keep up with each others lives. A few of our military friends from California are now located in Virginia Beach (you may know this from the Mount Trashmore post).

I was heading to Virginia Beach and going to meet with a photographer who I have followed and talked to for a while who also has family in the area. This gave us the opportunity to stay with our friends the Newmans. If you know me in person, you may have heard me refer to the wife/mom of the family as super-mom.

my son E and friend H

Our sons have been friends since they were in diapers. It is so easy for them to get together and play for hours as if there were no separations. I feel the same is true for us. The family was so generous and housed us for two nights. We had a total of four adults, five children under 6, four of which were boys, and two dogs. This may sound chaotic, but it was actually pretty peaceful. They also have something at the Newmans that we don’t… a yard… with a swing set and a bounce house.

You would think with all the chasing the dogs,  jumping in the bounce house, the hot summer sun, and the swing set that they would pass out from exhaustion… nope.

Insert water balloon fight here.

husbands got busy filling balloons in various sinks…

After the fight and hose down (freshly cut grass sticks to wet kids) there was an epic bath battle where all the kids thought it’d be a good idea to rinse of in the same tub.

On top of all the fun, they fed us barbecue and chatted the night away. And the kids… they still aren’t tired. But we were so forced sleeping was a must considering we had arrived at their home close to 1am the night before.

Did I mention this is “fourth of July” weekend?

We depart of Sunday morning at 10am to head north to a Lego birthday bash… what should have been a 2-3 hour drive quickly slowly became a 6-7 hours drive. With the party for the youngest Atkinson boy starting at 12pm… we didn’t arrive until after 4pm. Needless to say many others were also held back because of traffic on the notorious 95N. We only got to stay for an hour 😦

Bday Boy. E and Jr

My son quickly gave his birthday wishes, ate his cake, and saw his friends. He has known these boys since he only one year old, so to only get to see them for an hour and push the kids back in the car for another hour or two to be at dinner with our family in DC on Sunday night was difficult and full of complaints.

No matter how short or rushed our meet-ups are, at least we have them. We take time out and things may not always go our way, or as smoothly as we hope, but we try.

I have no doubt, with how small our branch of the military is, that we will again be nearer and likely farther away. Something in these boys… you can tell they will always have a connection.  He may have limited friends here but it’s kind of cool at the age of 5 he has quality friends already.