Tuesday, January 3, 2012

a gift

Over New Year's weekend.... and I mean Thursday until Sunday, we were treated to one last Christmas gift. Anthony and Chelsea were able to come and spend 4 straight days here- with us, with my parents. When all of us are in a room it just feels good, really feels like the most spectacular gift ever. It feels absolutely, positively complete.... minus a few more babies! We don't usually get to spend this many days with them (except at the beach)- they are busy, we are busy and the distance between here and Cincinnati makes it hard to spend more than a day together. So you can imagine the light on Ivy's face when I got to explain for 3 nights- "It's okay to go to bed. Tomorrow we will see Unc and Esie again." You could just see Ivy breathing a huge sigh of relief. She seriously thinks they hung the moon.... and who knows maybe they did?!?!

Day after day, night after night we spent time eating and laughing and playing and just enjoying the gift of family- it was especially fun for the big girls to go get an awesome pedicure together on Friday! So fun! Tula adored her Unc and Esie from across the room, smiling from time to time but not leaving the comfort of familiar faces. Before long she will be tagging along with Ivy as the coolest Unc and Esie teach our kids all the cool dance moves :)

Ivy had fun living out her "hair dresser" dream and playing with Esie's pretty hair. Esie was such a good sport. Ivy twisted and pulled, brushed and pulled, styled and pulled on the most "beautifulest" hair ever. She had so much fun!

Unc tried to ensure that Ivy could sport his team's colors on Saturday... by winning Ivy's heart with a "girly UK shirt" on Ivy's request. She was excited to match her Unc and give him a high five since his team (and her team too) won! Tula was warming up to Unc a bit- but not enough to get a real picture of them. Ivy will have to keep telling Tula stories about them to convince her to jump on the Unc and Esie train!

This New Years weekend was truly one last gift...
relaxation...
family...
sunshine...
family...
laughter...
family...
oh and the girls totally smoked the boys in Taboo...
Truly a gift that will leave us memories that last throughout the year!