December 14 – January 15, 2024 – Northern Virginia
Christmas holidays in Northern Virginia
After a short stop at Airstream of Virginia to get a running light and speaker fixed, we’ve landed!! We’re SO excited to be here visiting with the kids and grands over the holidays. Dude and NeNe are here to terrorize the family for a month – LOL!!!!
The Sandman is getting a nice break, being stored at our son in-laws Mothers driveway.
We split up our time between our son’s house and our daughter’s house. Both families have been so accommodating and we’ve missed our family so very much.
On Saturday Dec. 16th, as a family, we participated in “Wreaths across America” at Arlington National Cemetery. We got up at the crack of dawn to ride the subway to Arlington. As we got off the subway, we were overwhelmed with the 1000’s of people there. Wowzer! It was SUCH a humbling experience – no words could ever express how we all felt. We were proud as can be, to place wreaths, including visiting Donna’s Dad and putting a special bow on his wreath. We were happy to see that his headstone had finally been made and put in place.
Something on our bucket list was to see the National Christmas Tree. It had been MANY years since we had been to DC to see it. The whole family bundled up and off we went to enjoy the sights and sounds of Christmas in our Nation’s Capital…burrrrr, we’re not used to this COLD weather – LOL!!!
Have you ever been to the Changing of the Guard at Arlington? If not, it should be on your bucket list. There is simply nothing like it that we’ve ever experienced. Words cannot express how moving it is. Although we’ve been there many times to watch, our oldest grandson had not. It was something he wanted to experience, so on a cold winter day; we headed back down to ANC to partake……
We got to experience Christmas with our son’s family which included our two littlest grands. They still “believe” in Santa so it was quite the crazy morning LOL!! Later on, our daughter and her family arrived for a wonderful, yummy brunch. They had plans later in the day with her husband’s family for Christmas dinner. Holidays are so special… the kitchen was filled with wonderful smells while we waited for our dinner to unfold. We ate……and ate more……whew it was good……
The day after Christmas, we transitioned to our daughter’s house for the rest of our stay.
Being as we were in the area for a while, we had to do some “adulting” daw gone it. We were able to schedule ahead of time, doctor/dentist/eye/truck maintenance appointments – got all clear!! We also got together with longtime friends and swapped stories for hours at a time.
We are VERY lucky to have the family that we do. We all got together many times for games, lunches, dinners, drinking, and all the laughter/story telling that goes along with being together. We love our kids and grands “to the moon and back”. They are truly the…………best……we……could…..ever……ask……for.
Alas it’s time to go……………but we’ll be back!!! With tears in our eyes, off we go…….
