After The Tenth..... When The Fun Really Begins

It is Saturday afternoon and I'm feeling a little lost.

This is the first day in almost a month where Annie, the girls, and I are home alone. The house seems strangely quiet and almost empty, which isn't something that we've felt in ages. The whirlwind family tour started on Saturday December 24th, when we flew to Austin for Christmas and only ended this morning. (The Christmas photos are coming...I hope to have them posted before April) We were joined in Austin by Rich Pappa and Granny and had a really fun time with everyone. We left on the 27th and arrived home really late...so late that it was technically the 28th by the time we walked in the door.

With the girls half asleep already, we put them in their respective beds and faded off to sleep ourselves. The next morning I headed out to work, (Long story I won't go into...but I was supposed to still be on vacation, but things don't always go as planned) and Annie headed to the airport to pick up Grandma.

Grandma spent a rousing New Years Eve with us, each trying hard not to fall asleep before the ball dropped. And then on the 2nd, Pappa-ChooChoo arrived for a week. His week with us ended 3 days before Grandma left, so it was two trips to the airport that week for drop-offs. Grandma's flight was Wednesday evening and during the day something unusual happened; something that had actually occurred once before as well..which made it even more unlikely to occur this week.

Sometimes with family visits they are planned out weeks and in the rare occasion, months in advance; but sometimes they just seem to come together. Well, this time it turned out that Granny Kupper was heading north for a few days and Rich Pappa was going to be alone. Seeing as that wasn't going to be a lot of fun, he dropped Granny off in the Jacksonville airport and then continued onto South Florida for a short visit with us. His arrival happened to be Wednesday afternoon, which meant he needed an early check-in at Hotel Sznitken. Someone at our reservation desk had already granted Grandma Sznitken a late check-out. Needless to say, the housekeeping staff put it into overdrive and had clean sheets and a freshly made bed ready for our incoming house guest.

As strange as it seems, this is actually the second time that my Mom and Annie's dad have crossed paths on visits. After a few quick hellos that minutes later became goodbyes...it was off to the airport for Grandma. Rich Pappa stayed with us until this morning, when he had to head back to the northern part of the state to meet Ginny at the airport. Funny thing..I thought he was packing up his stuff earlier than we had discussed, but I just chalked up my confusion to my less than impeccable memory. Turns out that after breakfast he was gauging his time left with us on the coffee maker clock. He was on 95 heading north before he finally looked at the dashboard clock in his car and realized that he had left 30 minutes earlier than expected. Annie and I have been meaning to call the coffee maker manufacturer because the clock seems to run fast and needs to be reset every 6-7 days, and it had creeped ahead 30 minutes and was ready for us to reset it. I guess on his next visit he owes us half an hour.....

It was a bit of a crazy time, but there was so much going on and so much fun that I wouldn't have changed a thing. Over these past few weeks we've been crazy busy seeing people, doing things and eating really well. (Really well taste wise, but probably pretty poorly waist wise) Macy and Laney probably won't remember any of this and I'm sure details will fade from my memory as well. But what will remain with me forever is the fact that between Thanksgiving 2011 and mid-January 2012, it was hectic, it was crazy, and we got to spend a lot of time laughing, sharing and just hanging out with so much of our family.

But now the "month of family time" has passed and all the girls in the house are sleeping and I'm sitting at my computer trying to decide whether to take advantage of this quiet time to also catch up on some sleep or to finally start going through the Christmas pictures.....

The biggest surprise of our Thanksgiving trip, besides the fact that dad made breakfast, was that Macy essentially left Florida as a toddler and came back as a little girl. I can't explain whether it was the cold temperatures, the attention she got from the family or if it was just coincidental, but she seemed to mature right before our eyes.

The trip north was full of fun times and especially spending the holiday at Aunt Kim and Uncle Adam's place. I have to admit that coming home for the holiday and not spending it at my parent's place felt a bit unusual, but once we got to their house it just felt...well it just felt right. Besides taking on the Sznitken clan, which can be challenging enough, they also had the DeGraff's which meant that we were a big, big table of hungry mouths. It was a lot of fun watching Macy play with Matty (Kim's Brother's son---also known as Adam's nephew) You'll see in a couple of the pictures below that Macy really enjoys the DeGraff men. (That's Matty she's mauling in front of the white chair.)

You might notice a picture below that is Macy standing next to a Pine Tree. My parent's neighbor had recently planted a new tree in the space between their houses. We had this idea that we would take a picture of Macy next to this tree each year, so we could track how both of them grow. Seems like a cute idea, but let's see if next year's photos include one of the Van Nostrand pine.

Thanksgiving was also a big holiday for Laney...though I should probably say that Laney was big for the holiday. Travelling with two kids under two is not easy by any stretch of the imagination, but thanks to Laney's advanced size there was one thing that was easier this time than ever before. We now only have to worry about packing one size of diapers since the girls are now both using the same ones. As we left for the holiday, we received confirmation that Laney was now within 4 pounds of Macy and closing fast. As we dressed our little Chumbawamba (my new nickname for her) each morning, we reminisced about how the outfit she was wearing for Thanksgiving was the same one Macy had worn last Christmas. For the math challenged, that means Laney is wearing Macy's 12 month clothes at 6 months.

It was also during this trip that we realized Macy had inherited grandma's love of photography, though she hasn't been able to duplicate grandma's talent for it. I have a memory card full of pictures of area rugs, people's ankles, and a random knee or two.

As always, we tried to visit Jefferson's Ferry a much as possible, to see GG and Aunt Anne. As you might have guessed, the girls were quite the hit as we paraded them around. I have to admit that I might have walked around the place a little more than usual...to let many of the resident's get some holiday joy from them. It might have appeared that I was enjoying showing them off and getting the attention, but that really wasn't the case; I promise.

I had a plan for how I was going to cover our Thanksgiving trip but that went out the window when something quite surprising occurred one morning. Grandpa made breakfast for us. Let me repeat that because of how unusual that statement is to type...Grandpa made breakfast for us.

One morning he volunteered (which really means: goaded;peer pressured; guilted into; was forced) to make breakfast for everyone. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we had green pancakes. Ok, that's really more a Christmas theme and a Thanksgiving theme..but how cool are green pancakes?

 We were so wowed by the moment, that we ran to get the camera and took a few hurried photos before the moment passed.

While we are speaking of Grandpa, I should mention how much fun Macy and Laney had with him. You'll even see that one morning while dropping him off at the train station Macy was so into it, that we had to go onto the train before it pulled out of the station. Macy was so impressed by the whole thing that if you ask her how her grandfather gets to work, she'll tell you that he takes the "choo-choo" and hence his new name: Papa Choo Choo