home again

We are home again from our week long visit to Grandma's house in Tennessee. (and I think we've brought our tails with us too)

It was a great visit. My sister who lives in Boston flew down on Friday, and my brother who attends Harding University drove over on Friday night. We got to have a few hours together shopping on Saturday and it was just like when I was in college... except my siblings are all grown up too. It was a lot of fun to pick out the kids Halloween costumes, and a couple toys for the kids with them.

Ryan got a monkey suit, and Alyna will be a butterfly of course. It's really a fairy costume, but most everyone at church knows she loves butterflies so it will pass. We just have to put them on a few times between now and the church Harvest party so they get used to the really weird clothes.

Sunday, my brother left, but Barry and my brother-in-law both flew in. Over the week we did lots more playing with the babies, shopping, and just hanging out together. I'm really glad they could make it down.

Ryan grew quite attatched to his "E- ma" during the week. He didn't even like it if she was holding Alyna, but grew especially fussy when she held another baby during the cradle roll class on Sunday. At night, he would actually call for her and cry until she came and gave him a goodnight hug.

My sister went with me (and the twins) to visit a college friend of mine who lives nearby. It was a lot of fun talking with her face to face and meeting her son, and niece. We keep in touch through Facebook and blogging, but getting together again is so much better.

One highlight of the trip for me was attending the ladies bible class at my Mom's church on the two Wednesday nights. They are sharing personal testimonies of God working in their life, and I was very uplifted by the 2 different stories I heard from the women there. God works in mysterious ways to bring about change in people's lives.

The flight home was uneventful, but still tough. You can't explain to a 1 year old why they can't get down from the seats... try two 1 year olds. Fortunately, we had 3 seats to ourselves, and on the second flight we actually each had our own row with one child. We didn't have to get off the plane for the second flight because it was going through to the destination so we let them down in the aisle for a few minutes and changed diapers before the next flight. Then it was bottles and bedtime... well trying to put them to sleep was interesting. They kept waving and playing peek-a-boo with the people around us. Eventually they went to sleep at about half an hour after their normal bedtime. I laid Alyna on the seat next to me for most of the flight. They were upset at first, but slept during the 1 1/2 hour drive home, and went straight to sleep in their cribs. They awoke at 2 am and we ended up giving them another bottle. We normally wouldn't, but it was a rough evening and they woke up in a different place than they'd gone to sleep which is always weird.

I got up with them at 5:50 am, 6:20, and 6:30, so I've stayed up... and now it's 7:30 and they are still asleep. I hope we'll have good nap times today.

They sun is out, but it's still cool outside. The babies will love running in our yard. It rained every day we were in TN so they couldn't play outside, and they really fussed about that. We did take them to the small mall in my parents town and let them walk all around on 2 days. That wore them out. We'll have to try that here on bad weather days this winter.