The Duke Family: Tennessee and family

The whole gang except for Aunt Lucy and Johnny. I love my family!

We just took a very long trip down to Tennessee to see family. My cousins that live there all graduated, Melanie from college, Megan from high school, and Madison from middle school. They had a big party to celebrate and pretty much the entire family came for it. We rented a cabin that my dad and his girlfriend, us, and my brother and his family all stayed in. My aunt and uncle and cousin Rachaelle and her family all rented a smaller place just a couple places down from us. It was a very fun trip, even if we did have to drive for days to get there!

Kyle is almost a year now. He is such a cutey!

We left Thursday night and stayed in a hotel in DC. Aaron had an interview with the RNC Friday morning and was actually offered a job while he was there. So we took off from DC around noon with a job offer we were pretty gosh darn excited about. After driving all day, we finally couldn't take it any more and stopped in a hotel around 11pm. The boys have a hard time sleeping in their car seats and Eli kept waking up and crying every 20 minutes, which he actually didn't remember in the morning.

Noah and Kenny playing. I guess the objective of the game was to throw bean bags at Kenny.

We finished the drive Saturday morning and made it to Tennessee around 11am or noon (I can't remember now because of the hour time difference). My family was all there at the cabin waiting for us so we could go to Aunt Vicky's. Once we got there the kids immediately wanted to go swimming, which is pretty much where they spent the rest of their weekend. It was a hot and humid weekend so the pool was definitely a bonus!

Sunday was my brother's birthday. Unfortunately for him it was pretty lame. No cake. No presents. It sucks getting old! But he did get to spend the day lounging in the pool and hanging out with family which might be one of the best things there is.

All the kids (minus Kyle) cuddled up with Uncle Billy watching Disney Jr.

We took off back home Monday morning. It was another long drive home but luckily Aaron was able to fix the DVD player (the charger broke on the drive down and he was able to find a replacement). The kids were really good in the car. They patiently watched The Magic School Bus and some movies with a promise that we would stop at a hotel that night and go swimming. Aaron actually had a conference call on Monday afternoon with Øptimus and that's when they gave their counter offer, which he accepted the next day.

For some reason all the big kids liked playing in the baby play pen.

This picture of Noah petting one of the dogs is just too precious.

We left again bright and early Tuesday morning to finish the last leg of the trip. We would have been home around 3 if it wasn't for the trafficky section between NYC and Bridgeport. I think we finally got home after picking Ruby up from the dog sitters around 6:30. It was definitely a lot of driving but was so nice to see everyone. Growing up we used to do a big family trip/reunion every summer and this was reminiscent of those.