McDaris Reunion 2012

We had another successful McDaris Reunion weekend in Asheville NC last weekend.  Pop Pop and GG came down for the long weekend, Ashley met up with us in Asheville, and we were jam packed as usual!  Friday was spent playing in Charlotte, Saturday we headed up to Ashville and ate pizza and danced at the bluegrass festival Shindig on the Green, and Sunday we went to the reunion and explored our family’s land in the mountains before heading back on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Like my Pop Pop used to say, “They blue, ain’t they?” 

You know each year our reunion seems to sneak up on us and we’re always so busy that it’s easy to think ‘I just don’t have time’ this year.  But once you’re there and take time to just relax, enjoy your family and the beauty of the mountains, you realize just how important it is to make time for family and to honor your history.  Very important indeed!

Ashley’s Visit

Now that my cousin Ashley lives in Christiansburg VA (and yes Hokie friends, we plan on crashing at her house for a game or two!) she was able to come visit for a long weekend. We had a lot of fun and Sean told me that he likes “Ash-a-wee” because “she’s a lot of fun to play with.”  We were busy – took the boat out, watched some movies at home, visited the pool, went to a movie in the theater (a rare luxury these days) and had some pretty nice meals! Oh, and don’t make fun of my awkward smiling-a-bit-too-big pose below, I was on my tippiest tippy toes trying to be as tall as Ashley ;)

 

 

 

He’s Loose!

Since Sean did so well sleeping in a regular bed at the beach, we decided to keep up the momentum and take the side off his crib when we got home.  He was really excited and made a great transition.  In fact, today was the first time he’s even gotten out by himself before we came in the room.  But now that he is potty trained it’s good that he can get out when he needs to - what a big boy!

Family Vacation

We took our first “family of 4 Family Vacation” last week to Hilton Head Island, SC.  The first few days were rainy with a tropical storm (that’s just our luck) but the rest of the week was beautiful. We stayed at the resort where Carolyn and I would visit the Harris clan 10+ years ago so the whole trip brought back a lot of really fun memories.   We also had a lot of fun and the boys were great – they slept in the same room for the first time and had fun giggling with each other at nap time.   We kept them up late and slept in most mornings and made the most of our first family vaca!

I had to put my pictures into a picture montage because  1) I took too many to include in a post here; 2) I love making picture montages; and 3) I like using the word ‘montage’.  Enjoy!

Dylan’s 1st Birthday

As I say in almost every post, where does the time go? Our baby turned one a few weeks ago and we’re still getting used to it.  I just can’t believe it’s been a year!  We had a really nice family birthday party for him and we were all very excited that both Grandma & Grandaddy and Pop Pop & GG came from out of town to celebrate.  We had a barnyard baby animal theme which was cute and Dylan seemed to really enjoy the cake.  In fact, you’ll see in one of the pictures below that it’s actually missing some icing because he took a big swoop of it right as he was blowing out his candle!

We started a new tradition of the Birthday Hat this year.  Since Grandaddy and Emmi’s birthdays are the day after Dylan’s they got to wear the hat and celebrate too!

Dylan is starting to get toys that Sean thinks are pretty cool so Sean had to try a few things out to make sure he could explain things to Dylan ;)

So Much to Blog, So Little Time…

I always have these great ideas in my head of picture collages, movie montages with just the right songs, extensive details about all of the important things going on with the 4 of us but can never seem to make enough time to do all of it!  So, in lieu of posting about Dylan’s 1st birthday, our surprise trip to MD or having a cute family vacation post, here is a little teaser video of my boys fishing our last night of vacation. It was a good time :)