Charlie's Mom: Long Distance Love

Friday, July 9, 2010

Long Distance Love

What a week! Over the past 8 days Charlie has said goodbye to some of his first dear friends and has deepened relationships with some of his family. It's definitely been a week of ups and downs.

Unfortunately, we've had to bid farewell to two of Charlie's Angels. Lakely and Kate (and their respective parents) are both leaving Summerville for opportunities and adventures elsewhere. We are thrilled for both families, but selfishly, we are very sad to see them go. To make sure they all knew how much they would be missed, we had a neighborhood Shrimp Boil last Thursday night to celebrate friendship and new opportunities. It was such fun!

On the heels of the celebration, Charlie's great Uncle Brent, Great Aunt Christa and cousins Stephen, Ryan and Katie arrived on IOP for their summer vacation. Then two days later Uncle Matt, Aunt Erin, cousins Tyler and Elizabeth and the whole Haggerty clan drove up from their vacation on Hilton Head, so we've had a wonderful week of eating, laughing, boating, eating, digging, sunning and more eating.

Charlie is quite smitten with Elizabeth & Katie, has a serious case of hero-worship for Tyler, Stephen, Ryan, and has quite possibly found his soul mate in Uncle Brent. Obviously, we would have enjoyed our visitors no matter when they came to town, but the timing couldn't have been better. We needed the reminder that relationships can still flourish with family and friends regardless of where we live -- and while a week here and there doesn't replace living in the same town, it does provide the opportunity focus all of our energy on enjoying each other.

And it gets even better! The Daniels arrive a week from today, the Freemans a week later and then we head to San Diego to meet up with BaBa, PaPa and the whole family for the first week of August! Charlie isn't going to know what hit him!