Back In The Saddle

So after 3 weeks of traveling our family is back in NYC again with a little time to rest here before classes start in a week. It is amazing how Steven Edward remembered our apartment and routine as soon as we returned home. He was so excited to be back in his familiar space! Our time with family and friends was great. So you may ask...what did you do for 3 weeks? Here we go...

We first went to Greensboro where my family is from. My sister was there with her husband and her 2 children along with both of my parents. Steven Edward learned to love dogs there and spent majority of the time chasing my mother's poodle while cackling hysterically. It is so hard to only see family at these breaks but it makes for sweet times with each other's children. We spent Christmas there before we headed down to southern Alabama to spend time with Steven's family.










So we packed up our potentially marriage-wrecking amount of luggage and headed down to Alabama with 19 other people, 14 adults and 5 children. All of Steven's family was there and we had an amazing memory-making time (isn't that what it usually is with that many people in one place?) with lots of cousin fun. The kids had a blast playing with each other and Steven Edward was enthralled with his older cousin Joseph. That was one of my favorite parts and will always bring up sweet memories. And evidently my brother-in-law Kent is worthy of his own post...so I won't elaborate on him here at all.















Then we headed back to Asheville for our last week of vacation. We were blessed to have a house to stay in all to ourselves since our friends the Dellingers had just moved into their new place, and they graciously offered us their old one. Unfortunately our entire family got sick so our time there was very quiet and restful. We weren't able to see everyone we wanted, but the people we did see were such a blessing to us. Two of my girlfriends (Bethany and Beth) and I were able to put together a shower for our dear friend Jenny who is due in a matter of days and her reaction made it priceless. Overall it was a sweet time.






And after a month of collecting new things, we added 2 pieces of luggage to our name and my mother is mailing us a box. I can happily say my husband laughed about it (after the plane took off and he was sure they wouldn't kick us off due to weight restrictions and after we repacked one bag in the check in line because it was $50 overweight!) and we are still happily married. There is nothing like packing to test a marriage!