The Fourth

 Daniel and I had been looking forward to this past weekend for several weeks.  Life has been so sweet and wonderful here, but to be honest, we both felt like we needed a vacation!  We miss our families so much, and we were especially excited to meet our new niece, Brynn, who is only 13 hours younger than Caroline!  We took a ridiculous amount of pictures (over 800!) during the weekend, so I will need several posts to catch up on all of them, but here's a glimpse into our weekend.

Both of the girls did great on our drive.  As we backed out of the driveway at 4am, I asked Elli if she was excited to go to Papa and Nona's house.  She answered me by nodding and saying, "At Papa and Nona's in twee minutes."  Ha!  Fortunately, it didn't seem to phase her too much when I delivered the bad news.

We of course took pictures of the auspicious first meeting of our two baby girls, but unfortunately they are a little blurry and the girls look very concerned.  They are still stinking cute, though!  I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving when they will be old enough to notice each other.

The mommies traded babies whenever possible.

Our two bigger munchkins are at really perfect ages to play together.  Elli can communicate a whole lot more as well as keep up with Micah better!  Of course, they're also at a perfect age to fight with each other.  :)  Yup, it didn't take them long to identify each others buttons and to experiment with pushing them.  Overall, though, they had the time of their lives, and I'm sure we'll be talking about all the fun things "Ewli" and "Bitah" did together.  Many more pictures of the two of them to come...

There were bubbles and babies and basketball, squirt guns and sparklers and snuggling, cards and conversation and yes, a little crying.  My parents were able to make it up for a visit Saturday morning, and we celebrated the Fourth at Big Papa Bob's (that's what Micah and Elli call their great-grandfather).

 

Our hearts are full... and a little homesick... from our time with family and friends.  I hope and pray that someday we won't be so far away!