Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Home again...

Home is such a great place to be...

We were all very glad to be back in our own beds on Monday night after flying all day. The kids had fallen asleep on the way home from the airport, and went straight to bed. They even slept in past 7 am in the morning which was wonderful since they had been waking up at 6:45 central time all week.

We had a wonderful time in my parents full house. 3 infants, 4 bigger kids, and 8 to 14 adults made for a noisy but wonderful family reunion.

We had planned to the Nashville zoo on Friday, but the weather didn't cooperate. Instead, we had lunch at a Japanese steakhouse where they cook in front of you, and then we went to the Opryland hotel. When we walked in the door Alyna said, "a jungle," as she pointed ahead of us. She did figure out quickly that it was a jungle without animals and was quite disappointed by that. Ryan just wanted to climb every set of stairs we came to, and there were a lot of them.

Friday night Barry and I went to dinner and the bookstore by ourselves. It's always enjoyable to finish a meal without having to share it, or get up to change a diaper.

On Saturday we did a photo shoot to get pictures of the whole family, the individual families, me with my siblings, the cousins, and the cousins with the grandparents. Of all the children to meltdown we never would have suspected it would be the 2 year old girl who loves to pose for the camera. Alyna just did not want to be there that day, and threw fits the whole time. I had to be the one holding her and forcing her to face the camera in the family photos. Candy was the only thing keeping her in place during the pictures with just the kids. After we said we were all done, she was perfectly fine again.

Saturday night my siblings and I and all our spouses went to dinner at O'Charley's. We don't see each other very often as adults, and it was a nice time to renew our adult friendships with each other.

Sunday for lunch we had a room reserved at Christy's 6th Street Restaurant and Cafe in Columbia. It was a wonderful place for the occasion, and they had a great home-style cooking buffet with roast, mac 'n cheese, mashed potatoes, salads, and more.

I was also able to do some shopping on a couple occasions and returned home with much needed new dress clothes.

We're still exhausted from the trip and the overcast skies here on Tuesday didn't help that, but the sunshine today is encouraging me to get things done.

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