Robert's visit!

In June, my oldest nephew, Robert came to visit for a few days. (For those of you counting, I have 22 nieces and nephews, and Robert is 22 years old. That means, on average I have gotten 1 niece or nephew each year since I was 11, though 6 of my nieces and nephews are on Chris's side. Still, not too shabby! But everyone is done having children except for us, so we'll just be good with our 22. :)) Anyway, it had been about 3 years since we've seen him last. We saw him in February of 2010 before we moved to California in May. He left on a mission to Zimbabwe for two years in August, and came back in the summer of 2012, just a couple months after we moved to Korea. So over 3 years later, we finally got to see him and he got to meet Maddie. He is still such a kid, and a fun-loving person. We loved having him here, and the kids loved having the play mate. He even babysat for us so Chris and I could go to an OB appointment distraction free! He also got to see baby Amelia via ultrasound. :)

See what I mean? What a fun kid...I mean guy. :)

While he was here, we took a trip down to Virginia Beach to visit Ashley. She had been gone for many months doing training with the Navy. Robert and Ashley are best friends, and really wanted to see each other. Plus, we of course wanted to see Ashley and support her while she was so far away from family. In fact, when she requested home made baked goods before we went down, Chris obliged and got up at 5AM the morning we left to make home made brownies and french bread. Ah, the love. :) We had a fun trip down, stopping in Chris's old stomping grounds for lunch - Richmond, VA. (This is the city Chris also proposed to me. :)) We went to an AWESOME pizza place that he took me to last year driving up from Texas to PA before we left for Korea. This place honestly has the most AMAZING pizza ever called Bottoms Up. If you're in the area, you must try it. They serve gourmet pizza with a ton of really yummy, interesting varieties, and the slice you get is seriously a quarter of the pie. YUM. Ok, enough about food.

We then continued on to Virginia Beach to pick up Ashley. We then went together to visit my aunt and uncle who live there. They are so fun to talk with and make us laugh a lot every time we visit. It had been quite a few years since we had visited them, and we were glad we did. We had yummy food and a great time together. We took Ashley back to the naval base late at night, and spent the night at my aunt and uncle's home.

We took this the morning we left, so missed the photo opportunity with Ashley.

Oh, that mischievous look of her's.

Playing together under the dining table.

The next morning, we visited a bit and then headed back home. It was a bit of a whirlwind of a trip, but a lot of fun. We enjoyed the rest of our time with Robert until he went home.

We are so glad that we had this opportunity to visit with Robert, especially since it will be another long while until we see him again. He is away preparing to deploy for a year to Afghanistan soon. We're sending up many prayers that he will return to us safely! We are very proud of him and love that boy!