Carson and Annalea

Summer Vacation Part I
The first part of summer vacation 2008 began with a red-eye flight to the east coast where we had our sites set on an 11 day 6 state tour, not a trip for the weak. I am beginning to see myself as a poor man's version of Chevy Chase's character, Clark Griswald, in National Lampoon's Summer vacation except I didn't share a beer with Carson or meet Christie Brinkley....anyway, here is a snap shot of our trip.
The first five days were spent in Pennsylvania and Delaware visiting with Grandad and Sittie and various friends. We spent a good deal of time in Chris and Danielle's backyard on the hottest day of our stay, somewhere in the mid-nineties with a bunch of humidity. Check out Seattle boy, he looks a little bit overheated.
As Carson gets older it is a pleasure to watch him develop stronger relationships with all of his family. He got to spend a lot of time with Grandad and Sittie during the trip (especially considering the 18 hours in the van). Carson can easily say 'Sittie"', which is Lebanese for grandmom, but he struggles with Grandad because the letter G is so hard. About halfway through the trip, he gave up and just started calling Grandad by his first name, John, after hearing Sittie a few times. In fact, he is now calling me "Cha-Cha" after his cousins repeated calls and also using Trish's name....funny.
We hit the road on July 2nd with Chapel Hill, NC on our mind. You may remember that my sister and family moved away from Seattle last year and back to NC. Well, we finally forgave them and visited their lovely home close to the campus of UNC. They treated us well and took us to a park where I snapped this picture of the crew.
Carson and Calder are becoming the best of friends. There was an intial rivalry between the two, but since we last visited with the NC clan in April, Carson has been super excited about hanging out with Calder. They spent a fun few days together in NC and VA.
After our short stop in NC, we(Grandad, Sittie, and the three of us) caravaned with the NC family northwest to Roanoke, VA where the heart of my mom's family lives. This was Carson's first chance to meet my mom's side of the family and we did it in style at the annual 4th of July gathering on Craig's Creek nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains. My cousin Rob even brought a few of his horses down from Cleveland for the family to enjoy. After a good bit of eating, socializing, and firework viewing we headed back to Mike and Jenny's for the night and headed back to PA the next morning. It was all a fun time and just the beginning of Summer Vacation 2008. If you want to see more pics, look at the July East Coast set in the flickr account.