6 Days with the Grandparents!

Trying out the tree in the front yard of my parents' new house.  Skip and Zadie are on the left and their cousins Izzy and Sophie are on the right.

As soon as Tori found out I was traveling to Washington, D.C. for a work trip, she started scheming about how she could join me.  My parents agreed to watch Skip and Zadie from Wednesday through Sunday, so we were very excited about that.  Tori was originally planning on taking Charlie with her and touring him around, but then she decided to ask her sister if she would watch Charlie during that time (she has a boy who gets along well with Charlie).  So it ended up that Tori got her big trip to D.C. and she got it kid-free!

We both had a great time.  Although I was working during the day, it was nice to stay in a hotel room (which we never do on our own dime) and to get out on dates at night.  And one of Tori's best friends lives in D.C. so we stayed with her family over the weekend and had a great dinner party with other Peace Corps friends.

Obviously while you're away from your kids you wonder how they're doing, so I was really happy to hear that Skip and Zadie were really well-behaved for my parents and were getting along well their cousins.  Big relief.  They were staying at my parents' new house in Solana Beach and were wearing themselves out at the beach everyday.  Skip has always been an early riser -- he wakes up between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m. every single day -- but he was so worn out from his daily activities (and not taking a nap) that he woke up between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m. each morning.  My parents had to check on him to make sure he was still breathing!

I was most nervous about how Charlie would do since he's not exactly a roll-with-the-punches kind of baby.  Apparently he woke up crying in the middle of the first night, but after that was totally fine and got along great with his cousin Gavin.  

So, many thanks to my parents and my sister-in-law Katie for watching our kids and making this very special trip happen.  It was fun to see the kids after their time away and see them so excited to tell us all about what they had been doing (well, Charlie didn't have a lot to say but he clearly enjoyed himself!).