Yes, I know Christmas is past, but I still thought the title appropriate. :) We were blessed to be able to spend Christmas in PA with my family this year. And crazy as it sounds, we drove. Yes, we drove. We left at 3:00 am on December 22nd, meeting up with the Hicks' in GA. Thankfully, the kids did great! Our only snag was in WV where we hit traffic and it took us about an hour to travel less than 5 miles. The frustrating part was that we were only about an hour and a half from home. This is about when Reese started getting fussy - but she was a trooper and hung in there until we got to my parents' house. All in all it took us about 16 hours to get to PA. Not quite as bad as we thought and we were finally at my parents' house. Where there was SNOW!!! :) Reese got to play in it twice and went sled riding down our small little hill. She laughed and seemed to have a good time. I know she won't remember it, but I took lots of pictures to prove to her that she did see snow. :) And Lord willing, one day we'll live where it snows!:)
Spending Christmas with my family was wonderful! We went to Christmas Eve service, had a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner and enjoyed a great evening of fun and fellowship. All of the kids went down to bed very easily and we adults stayed up playing some games. Frank and I went to bed around 11 or so only to be woken up at about 12:30 by Reese (who shared the room with us). Normally we would have just ignored her and let her fuss it out and cry herself to sleep, but this night we had agreed to let Gabe and Marcail sleep in the room with us as well ( so that "Santa" could get his gifts out of the room they were sleeping in.). So we lay her back down not once, but twice, only to have her get up, point over to where she can see Marcail and start to "talk". So we went out to the living room (where the toys already were) and let her play around for a little. We think she really just wanted to see the toys before everyone else. :) Finally at about 2 or so, we'd had enough (after all, we knew it'd be an early morning) so I woke up my parents, we put the extra pack 'n' play in their room and laid her down in a room by herself (she's such a socialite already!). :) She went to sleep pretty much right away and slept in until about 9 that morning (she didn't mind missing the other kids seeing the gifts- she had already seen them after all.). :) What a kook! :)
Christmas day was great and we were able to hang out in PA until Friday (we left early that morning and made it home in only 13 hours- yay!!). On Wednesday, the 29th we had every single member of my family and their families there at my parents' house. That would be 11 adults and 8 children in my parents' house. It was crazy!!! But we so rarely get everyone together and it was awesome to see everyone! :) What a fun time we had!! :)
