Uncle Larry comes for a visit

One of the great things about the Foreign Service is that you just keep running into people, sometimes in the most seemingly random and out-of-the-way posts. Some of you may have met Larry Blackburn, a good friend of ours who was with us in Mexico. He and I did language training together in DC, and arrived within a few months of each other in Mexico. We then proceeded to have lunch three or four times a week, go to movies together, and just generally hang out a lot. When Ellie was born, he just very naturally became Uncle Larry.

He has been in a bit longer than Jen, and wound up retiring out of Mexico. Despite that, he then went on to get a job with State in DC, working in the section that manages all of the overseas properties of State. He's now the DC guy in charge of things in much of SE Asia, and as part of that he gets to travel here on your nickels. He did just that, arriving Feb 13th, and spending both the evenings of the 13th and 14th with us. It was great to see him again, and the kids just loved him. Well, at least on the 14th they did. We had a bit of a Daddy error on the 13th, which wound up meaning that both kids were not adequately napped on the 13th, which of course is never, ever, ever a good thing. So Ellie had a 20 minute fit, and Ben was just a bit sleepy and grumpy. But Larry is such a good friend, he came back the next night. Or maybe he just didn't have any better offers...

Enough chatter - here's the photo.