There and Back Again: A Violet's Tale

We're back! It feels like I've been gone forever, both from home and the bloggy world! But never fear, I have returned, and with a gazillion pictures to share with you. I'm going to have to break our trip up into several posts or I might melt our computer trying to get all the photos up, but that just means you'll get to check back often to see more!

For those of you who don't know, we spent the Fourth of July weekend in Columbus, Ohio for Matt's family reunion. While there, we spent time hanging out in our hotel, we met lots and lots of family (some for the first time), ate great food, went to the zoo and a baseball game, swam, played at the farm, survived the 12 hours in the car there and back, and lived to tell about it! Here are a few random highlights of what we did.

Violet points the way. She loved pushing and riding on the luggage carts at the hotel.

"Wah-duh" was another big highlight. From the moment she spotted the hotel's water feature, she didn't stop talking about it. If the "why?" phase is anything like "wah-duh," we are in for it big time.

Violet's first trip to the zoo! We hit the zoo first thing after we arrived. It was hot and Violet ended up passing out just a couple hours in. Oh well, at least we gave it a shot. She might be a little too young still.

Can you guess her favorite part of the zoo? Yep, the wah-duh!

We also took in the Columbus Clippers minor league baseball game.

One of the trip highlights was getting to visit Great-Grandma in her swanky nursing home. Here we are in the ice cream parlor where you can dish out as much delicious ice cream as you want, whenever! The buckeye ice cream was the best!

Taking a dip in Aunt Stephanie's pool.

And thanks to everyone who voted in the roadtrip poll. On the way there, we split the trip in two so we could arrive in Columbus fresh. Coming home, we trucked it through all in one day. Violet was actually an excellent traveler, especially on our journey home. With plenty of 'nacks and Elmo on the DVD, she was good to go. We made it home in just under 12 hours, and boy were we happy to see our own beds!