Quality (extended) Family Time

Last week was completely, insanely busy!

I had a ton of stressful stuff going on at work, all of which had to be 100% completed by Monday morning. By Thursday, I was worried enough about my chances of getting it all done by quittin' time Friday, I decided to cancel our weekend trip. That's a lot of work stress! How did I cope? By coming home to this!



Danee on one leg, Jasper on the other, all warm, all soft. Better than Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil combined!

So, after nearly canceling Danee's whirlwind tour of the Tri-Cities, we made a split-second decision and threw a bunch of stuff in the van (only forgetting a few crucial items), filled her little tiny tummy to the brim and headed out!

First up: Snuggle time with Grandma Brinkerhoff! The last time my mom was featured here, her face had been frozen in a horrified expression because of some of the antics I had undertaken as a child... (file photo here:)



Well I'm happy to report that Mom's face has since recovered, and she was able to fully enjoy her newest (and probably final) grandbaby! She fed her a bottle, then combined some burping time with grandma snuggles...



Then we took Mom out to a Valentine's dinner at Applebee's - completely scoring a less-than-five-minute wait! By the time we were done, the lobby was standing room only, with wait times in the neighborhood of "no thanks, we'll go somewhere else!"

After returning Mom to the Pasco Retirement Castle, we made a LONG overdue visit to my cousin Alicia. She's been holding a whole lotta babystuffs for us, and now that we were finally in the same zip code, there was no way we were going to not meet up!

What a great visit!! When we got there, Alicia and her husband Bill were watching the awesome kids of Ryan and Danyelle, while they were out at their own Valentine Dinner. They arrived to collect their children shortly after we got there, and we all sat around visiting for a couple hours... Everyone who had been waiting to get their hands on our little Daneekins was able to, including Alicia's completely adorable son Payson.



From the second we walked in, he was jumping out of his skin to get some baby time in!

Danyelle's little girl Audrey also liked Danee, but only as long as her own Mommy wasn't holding her!



Time flew, we finally did the BabyStuffs Transfer, and then headed over to Donald & Lisa's, where my sister Susan was anxiously waiting to meet her youngest niece.  Unfortunately, by this time Danee had had WAY more time in her car seat than she was willing to endure peacefully, and she screamed the whole way there.  As a result, we ended our night there...  We had an extremely generous offer to stay with my aunt Carolyn, but the prospect of putting the poor tiny girl back in the car seat was too heartbreaking, so we had to turn her down.

This morning Cindy got some time in with Donald & Lisa's little Elisabeth, who is about twice the size she was in August when we last saw her!



Meanwhile, Lisa got to remember what a much smaller baby felt like...



As I looked at the couch, I thought the baby swap was one of the cutest things I'd seen in a while!



We wrapped up our visit with a round of ''Big Baby, Little Baby'' with Danee and her cousin Elisabeth.



Now we're home and exhausted, but I already want to go back and do a better planned, longer lasting visit... But there's not much time to think about that since I gotta get back to work in the morning!

HUGE thank-yous to all the people who showed us such generosity and hospitality - we had a GREAT time!