"... For purple mountains majesty, above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee..."
Our month long trip home to the US started with a bang in the beautiful Berkshires. Oma and Opa picked up our tired crew (2 hour drive to the Alghero airport in Sardinia, 1 hour (delayed) flight to Rome, dash through the airport to the connecting 9.5 hour flight to JFK) and drove us the 4 hours to Pete's hometown of Williamstown. We are on our first "home leave" trip. The trips, paid for by ISA, are meant to take place after your 2nd, 4th and 6th year of service, however we were able to defer last summer's trip since Maeve was still a newborn. We each had a seat on the flight and what a difference that made for Maeve to sleep in her carseat while the rest of us vegged out on the inflight entertainment. I know this is jinxing our return trip on Monday, but it really was an easy flight!
The gorgeous weather and excitement over seeing family and friends helped us overcome jet lag relatively quickly. The theme of the month was socialize, socialize, socialize... and repeat. This will easily go down as the best month of our lives. We have a lot of people to thank, but none more so than the grandparents who were collectively with us almost the entire month, helping us with travel, packing, babysitting, and giving us lots of opportunities to see friends. THANK YOU Nana, Pops, Oma and Opa! We are very fortunate to have your incredible support!
We arrived late on the 1st and didn't waste anytime the following day.
Maeve took in the splendor of America.
Jude loved the big backyard to play games with Oma and Opa.
The kids enjoyed playing with all of Pete's old toys. And George.
We went out for drinks with Pete's high school friends and then had our first (of many) reunions on the 3rd at Ron and Jackie's in Dalton. It was our first time meeting almost all of Pete's high school friends' kids and was a blast to see them all play together.
The newest addition, 2 months old.
Our attempts to get a kids' photo were hilarious.
The Mount Greylock crew did much better!
Later that day, Uncle Matt, Aunt Krista and cousin Addy arrived from NC. A brief family outing to the Green River, followed by an impromptu visit with Marc's parents and meeting life-size Pinocchio.
We were happy to be back for the 4th and had a good old fashioned small town USA day. First the town parade where Jude got more candy than he did on Halloween in the Netherlands! Being a small town, we were not surprised to run into Pheebs, Tucker and Harper- doing America proud in their red, white and blue!
The Rothschilds hosted a backyard 4th BBQ, with views to match the company!
It was well past bedtime for our jet lagged kids, but we couldn't resist a Beatle's cover band outside the Clark museum, where we ran into most of the parents of Pete's high school friends! A drive to the top of Blair Road to watch the fireworks over Williamstown with Matt and Krista capped off a pretty spectacular day.
On our last day in Williamstown, we visited the Windsor Lake State Park for a quick dip.
The whole crew getting ready to depart for Salisbury, CT, the next stop on this crazy tour!
