Our home base was at my parents' house in Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. I hurt my back during the move, and I took full advantage of my parents' hot tub to recover!
They were really gracious, and somehow we actually managed to get along quite well despite the disruption of our respective routines.
By Wednesday afternoon we'd submitted our visa applications, so the visit began then in earnest. We drove up to Kim's parents' in Baltimore for a couple of days, which was nice. The highlight was an overnight visit from Kim's brother's family. Our kids were overjoyed to see their cousins, and it made us feel great to witness the fun. We also had a chance to visit Kim's grandmother.
After that we drove up to Tyrone, in central Pennsylvania, to visit my grandmother. She lives in a retirement home close to the farmhouse where my father grew up. Though the farm itself has been sold, the family stills owns the farmhouse and my parents drive up there every couple of weeks to visit my grandmother and take her out to the house. At 96, she is lucid and sharp-witted, and she dotes on her great grandchildren!
After that we visited my brother in State College, Pennsylvania, home of Penn State University. His Benedictine Order is in charge of the Catholic community there, and he makes occasional trips back from Latrobe to visit with people, and squeeze in some time for research with colleagues at Penn State (he got his Ph.D. there). We were able to stay at the Benedictine residence, a 1930's-era building just outside the center of town. We enjoyed spending time with Boniface, and chatting with Father Matthew and Father David, who live at the residence now.All this time I was writing a research paper on work developed with former Microsoft colleagues, to be submitted on March 2 (the day we came back, as it turned out). I was carrying my laptop around making edits and sending e-mails to my coauthors whenever I could get Internet access. Panera Bread's free wireless was a great boon (as were their pastries)!
Finally we returned to our home base on Tuesday, and that evening received the good news that our visas had been approved, to be delivered Wednesday morning. Hurray! We booked a flight for the following Sunday, and so had a few days to work and visit some more. Kim took the kids to their old (and future) school, St. Mary of the Mills school in Laurel, visited some friends in Burtonsville, and managed to work in another visit to Baltimore to see the cousins.Overall we had a wonderful trip, and were very happy for the occasion, if not its circumstances!
2 comments:
Glad to see that you had a good visit back to the States, even if it was unplanned. And happy that the visa issues were resolved! We are visiting Maryland next week during spring break, and very much looking forward to seeing our friends. Happy Spring!
I think I saw the van around that time. I think I was shocked an blew it off that I was hallucinating. Sounds like a jam packed trip. All of the pictures are beautiful. This is clearly an experience of a lifetime for the kids.
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