Family Getaway

I copied this title from Sathya. I Love it...it's a perfect description of the nice long weekend we had with our "extended family" (Love this accurate description too!). It's only been FIVE years in the making and planning process, and three kids later, we're all finally able to schedule a mini-vacation together! We rented this awesome house in Virginia Beach. It was, quite simply, a Perfect weekend. Before we left a few friends said to me, "I hope you have good weather." Well, since it is February at the beach, we weren't really counting on that. But we were guaranteed good company and LOTS of laughs. As it turns out, Thursday, the day we drove down, was the nicest of the days. The others were windy, cooler, and rainy. It had no effect whatsoever on how much fun we had!

Olan Mills...Portrait Innovations...eh, who needs them when you have Unca Teesh (what Avi calls Satish) with his new SLR? It only took about 8 takes to finally get a picture with all three kids looking at the camera...even if it meant me having to use my hands as a vice grip to prevent Brady from looking over at Avi as he said "Cheeeeeeese!"

A sign of the times

Interestingly enough, we all had different monitors and no signals were crossed.

It appears that the little boys had their breakfast before the big boys had their coffee. ;p

The boys went swimming in the house's indoor pool.

Brett tried telling me the water temperature "wasn't that bad." Uh yeah, that's exactly what the look on these faces in the two small pictures below says! :)

Is Brady trying to eat the ball?
Now, why would he do that?
Oh, because he saw his Daddy do it!

Sat took one look at this scene and said, "It looks like a Daddy-and-me swimming class." haha!

Responsible fathers indeed

Brett was determined to have documentation of his blatant disregard for the posted pool rules. Here, he proudly accomplishes three violations in one.
#1 No running.
#2 No horseplay.
#3 No alcoholic beverages.
And here's perfect justification for rule #3. Brett's beer slipped out of his wet hands. Amazingly, it landed straight up and didn't spill any beer into the pool. Lifeguard Sonny rescued the drowning victim.

Brady: "Uh oh."

Hang in there Blue Moon...help is on the way!

Another violation of the "No horseplay" rule. The fellas introduce their sons to Chicken Fights.

I believe this one was #5- Do not leave children unattended. Yes, that's our 14 month old son sitting on the steps of a swimming pool all by himself. (Really his Daddy is just outside the camera frame.) ;p

It rained like crazy all day on Saturday. It was a wonderful day! We stayed in our pjs for most of it. I think we all took naps. We laid on the couch, the girls talked and read celebrity gossip magazines, the big boys played Wii football, the little boys played with floor toys...an awesome day being completely comfortable with friends.

Satish getting the Wii football crowd "hyped."

Unca Brett and Avi reading "Watching The Hokies With Daddy"
SO cute...both the book and the boys!

Unca Teesh was our paparazzi and took a bunch more pictures. If there are any other fun ones, I'll update this post once he sends them.

Each night the little boys would be settled in their pack-n-play beds by about 7:30ish. The adults would then put their game faces on and compete in what Sonny declared our group's first annual Olympics. Although there were a variety of proposed events, we really mostly just played board games. And yes, Team Luhring took home the gold! whoohoo! Brett managed to take some video during the "Mad Gab event." To think that this hilarity was only a small portion of what we actually experienced. TOO fun!