Summer's Here-Unofficially

What a great weekend!!!

Meredith and I traveled to Chester, VA (5 and 1/2 hours...not too bad) to surprise her uncle for his 50th birthday! His wife had been secretly planning the event for quite some time, and he was completely surprised. It was the perfect weekend for it, too, because her uncle is retired Army. Neat way to honor him and our troops....There were several of his Army friends there. He also had people from all over coming to visit him. There was family from Kansas, Colorado, SW Virginia, and of course, Tennessee.

So, Saturday was filled with meeting new people and celebrating! We stayed up late into the night talking, and playing Labyrinth...it's a Ravensburger game that they have reissued from my childhood....AWESOME!

The next day, several of us piled into the car and went to King's Dominion (www.kingsdominon.com) It is an amusement park just on the outskirts of Richmond. We had the best time, despite the 90 degree weather. There were at least eight coasters, and two of them were launch coasters, but everything we rode was pretty well liked. Three of the rides went over 70mph, and three stood out. One was the Volcano--a hanging blast coaster where you were shot through the ride, and at one point fired through the top of the volcano upside down. We rode it twice...once during the day....once at night (night was crazy!) The second ride was called the Grizzly. Meredith's uncle loved this coaster. It is a wooden coaster that beats about all I have ever seen, and it was completely surrounded by woods. So, it feels like you're going to see a Grizzly pop out. They did a great job on the ride and the environment for the ride. And finally, the third one the sticks in my head is called the Drop Zone. It's 300 ft. tall and you free fall at least 267 ft. reaching a speed of 70mph!!! We spent the whole day in the park. It was good times...even the long lines weren't bad, because we were able to enjoy talking and passing the time.

On Monday, you can imagine that we slept in! We then had breakfast and lunch with the family before we took off later that afternoon. As a matter of fact, we decided to follow/lead with her an aunt and cousin that live in SW Virginia. We ate dinner with them, and then made our way back to good ole JC.

Thanks to our friends, Mary and Reba, the puppies were well taken care of!

I hope your weekend was fun and as eventful as you wanted it to be.
CH