It's Rossell Reunion Time!

I promised details (and pictures) from the reunion, so here they are. We had a wonderful time in Oceanside, California last month at the Rossell Family Reunion. I hadn't been to one in 8 years, so obviously Jeremy and the boys had never gone either (wow, a lot happens in 8 years!). It was so fun for Jer to get to know my family better (and vice versa) and to watch Bennett and Ethan have fun with their cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great-grandparents. The only way I can describe the time is that it was a GIFT. The best present I could ask for... And I loved spending time with my family too! The whole time was just wonderful; we couldn't have asked for a better way to spend our family vacation. And that's saying something!!!

The boys got to sit in the cockpit on our flight out to San Diego. "We got to push the buttons, Mom!"

What 65 people (and their essential gear) look like on the beach every day!

The boys and their cousin, Savanna, had the best time just hanging out together...

Every time we built a sandcastle, it always got destroyed. Darn that tide!

Get it... SANDwich???

Grampy Fred and Ethan could not get enough of the waves...

The infamous Banana Split!

"Side by Side" for eternity... We love you Grams and Gramps!

"With Norm and Gege, We're feeling fine--It's Rossell Reunion Time!"

The boys are still talking about Uncle Craig and Aunt Theresa's dog, Molly. They LOVE her!

We stayed 5 days after the reunion so Jeremy could take the Clinical Skills portion of Step 2 of the medical boards in Los Angeles. It was fun to spend more one-on-one time with family and to see some more of California--even if we WERE in the middle of the crazy heat wave!
On Thursday the 27th, we flew from San Diego to Chicago, hoping to connect to Columbus that night. But some "weather" came up (which we never saw) which procluded most of the people in the airport from actually getting on an airplane and taking off. I swear, literally half of the airport was stuck there with us. They kept pushing the departure time back and back, until they finally cancelled the flight 5 hours later, with no chance of getting on another flight before Saturday afternoon. Along with the rest of humanity, we tried to get a rental car (unsuccessfully) or a hotel near the airport (unsuccessfully), so after waiting in a line of 300 people for a taxi at 2 a.m., with Ethan asleep in the stroller and Bennett asleep in a empty wheelchair, we finally caught a cab which took us ($40 later) to a Motel 6 in the middle of nowhere that had one double bed left and a police car patrolling the parking lot. We had no food, no car, no DIAPERS, and no cell phone juice.
After some semblance of sleep, lots of phone calls, two resourceful dads and an AMAZING travel agent at General Dynamics, we were on our way home in a beautiful 2007 Toyota Camry (why didn't we have THAT at Oceanside? No, we got the Monte Carlo...) with money to pay for it and food to get us there. We felt really blessed and grateful for everything as we sped down I-65 through the farmland of Indiana, blasting "Real Gone" and "Life is a Highway" from the Cars movie and singing right along--the boys, especially.
And now we're home, getting back into the swing of things and missing everyone terribly. Fiji in 2008, right???