Trip To Virginia, Part I

So, I'm back to posting, and as alluded to in the last post in... August (wow!)... we went to Virginia to visit Stacy's dad and family.

Sophie met Cal (grandpa Johnsrud) last summer, because Julie (grandma Johnsrud) flew him out to meet her - but now, the whole family was going to get to meet Sophie, and she them...

The trip was dreamed up by me as a surprise to Stacy, but I couldn't keep my trap shut for long... I wanted Stacy to get to see her dad again, and also to bring Sophie out to meet everyone.

Stacy and I were very hesitant about the travel component - our last plane ride with Sophie, which admittedly was under extreme circumstances, was the worst sequence of flights we'd ever taken. And yes, Sophie was the one and only reason for that misery.

Again, I understand that she was 19 months old, on flights that took us literally halfway around the world (which can wear many people down), and she'd known us for just over a week, but, it was the exact opposite of fun.

Anyway, we hoped and prayed that Sophie would be okay on the flight, and thankfully, she was. Now that she was into Dora and Kai-Lan, giving her a portable movie player helped A LOT. Combined with Stacy and I describing playfully what the airplane was doing at takeoff and landing, all contributed to us having a good flight in.

There was one hiccup, which was kind of a blessing in disguise.

When we checked in at the desk in Minneapolis, we were told that our flight was delayed by two hours, and that we were going to miss our connection in Atlanta to get to Richmond that night, and would have to stay in Atlanta overnight, and they were booking us on an early flight out the next morning.

It was a blessing, because we were originally scheduled to get to Richmond at around 10PM, which would have been pretty late. This way, we, and the Johnsrud's, were able to get some sleep, and we could start again in the morning.

Here are some pictures of Sophie in the big bed in our hotel room in Atlanta:







Everything went pretty smoothly, and we got into Richmond just fine the following morning.

Believe it or not, this is the only still picture I took while we were in Virginia - the rest is video, which brings me to the fact that part two will be coming soon, with video, and a selection of the portraits that we had taken of the family while we were out there...



I'll try to get part II up this weekend - so stay tuned!

Larry