VA

This is a late happy birthday to all of you from the Virginia Bennett clan. Too bad I don't have any of my pics on our new computer. ): Oh well. Sounds like we need to take a visit to Utah and see Geof.'s fam! It seems like forever! All of you (younger than me, might I add) with your cute little houses...that's wonderful. Utah has some pretty charming older neighborhoods. Geof. and I went on a perfect date last night. He took me to a pizza place in an older part of downtown Richmond. The thing that's sooo cool about Richmond (in Geof.'s words) is that they don't tear down the old stuff to build new, they either renovate, or work with what's already there. Like the restaurant where we ate was in a tall brick building, in what used to be an industrial part of the city. We walked up the stairs to the 2nd floor and ate on the balcony and the train was literally 10 ft. away from us. It was awesome! I kept thinking about how much Cole and Dayne would have LOVED it. 2 trains came by while we were eating and we just had to sit and wait until our conversation could continue. Too loud. We were discussing how trains back west are a little trashy (well, living right near them). Not at all the case here! The nicest neighborhoods are backed up to train tracks. Something nostalgic about the south, I guess. We're so happy to be back. After dinner, we walked along the river and saw a huge turtle trying to climb up the opening of a water spout (that's probably not really what it's called..) and he finally gave up and let the river take him down. Then we walked by the old train station that had been renovated and there was a wedding reception going on there. So cool! Right above where we were was the interstate connecting in all directions and a really cool sculpture was hanging from one of the roads. Does that make any sense? It was huge! I purposely didn't bring my camera so Geof. and I could enjoy each other without the constant picture taking, but this was unbelievable. So artsy and creative. Loved it. After that we drove through some neighborhoods that i'd never been to before that were old and established (much like Chelsea's and Jessica's) and Geof. and I fell in love. Anyway, some day we'll go back and take pics to post. Love all of you!
~Darla
p.s. June-bug and I are home from church again (we stayed home not last week, but the week before). She has "conjunctivis" which is the technical term for insanely goopy eyes and the runniest nose I've ever seen (and that's saying a lot for our fam!). It's so sad..