Monticello / Graduation

We took a trip up north this month to attend Eric's grad school graduation in New York City.En route, we toured Monticello, a 5,000-acre plantation, and the only historic house in the U.S. on the United Nations' World Heritage List. Monticello was the home of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States. Monticello is situated on a mountaintop outside Charlottesville, Virginia, and has an outstanding territorial view - that is until the thunderclouds rolled in and not only obscured the view but made us duck for cover to avoid getting drenched!

The countryside in Virginia is beautiful with rolling hills, quaint shops and a scattering of wineries - A good place to go for a long weekend. We miss the wineries in Washington, it felt like a little piece of home.

It was a happy occasion to see Eric graduate from Columbia and great to have an opportunity to catch up with Eric, Lis and Cassie. Their lives are all busy; I appreciate spending a little time together with them. They even made me a belated "mother's day breakfast". (Hmmm, I think whining about making my own breakfast on mother's day paid off!)

Cassie returned to SC with us. We accompanied her on a "haunted tour" of Charleston where we were entertained with stories of local folklore. Cassie managed to bring a little SC sunshine (in the form of a sunburn) back to the northwest with her when she left. Hopefully she's recovered - she hadn't seen sun for so long, I think she forgot about using sunscreen.