Welcome Home

On Wednesday Gramma and Grampa returned home from their mission to the Cape Verde Islands.  They were at our closest airport for a 5 hour layover before continuing onto their final destination so we decided to surprise them with a welcome home visit.

They didn't know we were coming so it was quite a miracle we were able to find them within 1 minute of walking into the airport.

 I haven't been to the airport with a missionary in a long time so I was quite surprised at just how many people were there.  Wednesday must be a big missionary welcome home day because the short term parking was completely full. This meant we had to drive out to the economy lot and ride a shuttle back to the airport. We didn't plan for this scenario, of course, so we were a few minutes behind schedule by the time we finally made it there.

There were 6 shuttles in rotation and everyone of them was packed with families coming to and from the airport to welcome home their missionaries.

Because they had such a long layover we took them to get some lunch downtown.  If the kids could pick anywhere in the world to eat, they would pick Chuck-a-Rama so we made all of their dreams come true.  Not sure if Gramma and Grampa's dreams came true, but my kids were in heaven.  :-)

After dropping them back at the airport we went to Lagoon for the rest of the afternoon/evening.  This time we had plenty of cousins to keep us company. Tiffany and Abigail and Grandma P with all of my sister Heather's kids were already there.

I just can't get over how cute Jameson is on rides. He is in a red shirt in the front row.  He and June were little partners in crime and loved every minute of it.

Since my parents were watching my sister Heather's kids for the week, and my sister Tiffany and Sister-in-law Jen were also staying at my parents house we had 13 out of 19 grandkids on the P side together for a few days.  It kind of felt like a pre-reunion party.

Britton was nice to take all of the little boys out to play on the trampoline.

When I signed Korinne up for swimming lessons in April I had no idea it would be such a crazy week. We made it to 4 out of 5 lessons even though it was raining on the last day of class.

Friday afternoon we headed back to Lagoon for another day of fun in the sun with cousins.  The weather was perfect and the cloud cover made it nice and cool.

On Sunday we shifted back to Adam's side of the family and went to a "Missionary opportunity to speak" for a nephew getting ready to leave for a mission to Cleveland, Ohio.  Adam's parents and several siblings were in town for the event, so we had a pre-party for that reunion, too.  Braiden is the first grandchild to leave on a mission which means the family is now entering a new phase of life.

July is in full swing and has kept us hopping.  We're off to one family reunion this weekend and another family reunion next weekend.  Good thing we're ready to party! :-)