Road trip summer 08- Third time's a charm, or at least, the last time

Got back this past week from a couple of days in Williamsburg and then a few more in Kitty Hawk, NC with the family. Not great distances, but long drives given various speed limits and the added challenges of children in cars for hours on end. Nobody peed their pants or threw up in the car, so we'll call it good. The children did ok, too!

Elise and Lucas with appropriate charges in the stockade.

Our Williamsburg trip was primarily for Busch Gardens- we got free tickets to go there a few years ago because of our military background (they call it the "Salute to Heros") which was a great experience. Our children have pined to return frequently since then, and so we took advantage of another window of opportunity and more Salute to Heros free tickets. Woo-hoo!

Escape from Pompeii, with my group in the front row....

It was warm there, not too hot, not too crowded and the children did pretty well, which made the free admission that much more enjoyable. I have to say I'm impressed with the children's amusement park visits this summer.

The big-bellied bird man of Busch Gardens....

We stayed at a time share place for a discount so they could talk about selling us a place- or rather time at a place. I'm still not quite understanding how a time share isn't more like a fancy rental than it is "ownership", but that's another blog. In any case, when my parents own a number of these time shares that are "deedable", we don't need to buy any more.

Which leads us out to Kitty Hawk, for an extended family reunion with the Tucker clan at, u guessed it, a time share! My parents collected and used a number of their time share allocations and got a number of units, which was a good thing as we had up to 30 people together there at our peak time on Saturday.

That's all 30 of us- some of the grandchildren we're not quite team players- the result of taking pictures in the late afternoon when they needed naps.

My youngest brother indicated it was some crazy amount of time since we'd had the "whole" family together (parents, all 6 Tucker children, spouses and grandchildren)- something like 8 or 11 years. So that was nice. We enjoyed a number of activities- days at the beach, some at the pool, just hanging out at Grandma and Grandpa's unit, one evening we did a family talent show, another we looked at old photos on somebody's laptop. I think I need to invest in a laptop projector....

The original gang of six, yukking it up at our little beach photo session.

Some of the grandchildren doing the photo op at the beach.

We also hit the Currituck Lighthouse, with views of the sound on the west and the Atlantic on the east...

From the top of the lighthouse.

And the Wright Brothers monument, museum, etc.

My big-headed space children, celebrating the progression of flight since the Wright bro.'s day...

Andrea has done a great job of blogging all this already- she had easier internet access at Kitty Hawk due to their unit's proximity to the admin office of the resort, which provided wireless access. That, and she's just dang good at blogging about family activities in general.

http://tuckertidbits.blogspot.com/2008/08/sties-in-obx.html

http://tuckertidbits.blogspot.com/2008/08/beach-bliss.html

http://tuckertidbits.blogspot.com/2008/08/poop-in-pool.html

In any case, a nice break with family, and now we're back home- I think my family has spent more time vacationing since we got here than we've spent in our house. But we're home again, my accomplishment yesterday being clearing boxes out of the garage enough that we have both cars inside the garage. Woo-hoo!