Two weeks ago, I attended my very first family reunion, which Dad's family has every year (Julia made her reunion debut three years ago in Austin). This year's event was near Cleveland, so the four of us got on an airplane. It was my first time with my own seat on the plane (I flew in my carseat); last time around, I had been young enough to fly on Mom and Dad's lap.
Here's a video of how I killed time at the airport before the flight (and at the end, there's a little sneak peek of what happened later that day).
While I love planes and airports, I wasn't very happy during takeoff, and I made Dad hold my hand and comfort me the whole time. I did much better when we were allowed to use electronic devices and I could watch Mater's Tall Tales on our DVD player.
After we landed, we stopped by Youngstown first, to visit with Great-Grandma Emma, whom I had never met before (Julia had only met her once, a week before I was born). We had such a nice visit with her; she's so sweet!
Then we visited Aunt Paula, who lives nearby. We had lots of fun with Maxwell, her cat (or kicia, as we say in Ukrainian).
Maxwell is blind, so I'm sure he didn't know what was going on with these two energetic kids squealing in his direction. It was great seeing Aunt Paula, too.
After that, we spent a couple days at Cedar Point, the Ohio amusement park that Dad went to as a kid, but we'll have a whole other post about that super-fun place. Instead, let's fast-forward to the reunion itself. We also enjoyed seeing our relatives (there were 100 of them in all!), but not as much as we loved just spending time with each other!
And look who was there: Bub! (You know him better as Grandpa.)
Grandma was there too. During the family picnic, she helped me play softball.
Julia's favorite people to spend time with at the reunion, without a doubt, were Uncle Ryan and his girlfriend Adrienne.
She loooooooved Adrienne, and talked about her the whole time! She also loved swimming all by herself in the hotel pool.
Don't worry, Dad was close by the whole time. Here's a video of Julia's solo swim.
We had such a terrific time at the reunion, but Cedar Point was even better. We'll tell you all about it tomorrow!
