Happy Holidays

Ahhh...home again! Let me begin by wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I pray your holidays were wonderful. Ours were eventful. We left on Sunday, December 23rd for New Jersey for the holidays. I think Deacon's face in this picture displays how we all felt about getting up at five a.m. for shuttle pick-up, so we could get to the airport, check in, then sit around until 11:30, when they finally started boarding the plane.

After eight and a half hours on the plane (which the boys slept maybe an hour of) we finally landed and were whisked away to my mom's. The next day, Christmas Eve, was a Christmas Eve we will probably never forget. We went to my Aunt Gail's in Pennsylvania for the family gathering. About an hour after arriving, Josh started throwing up. Oh yeah. Poor guy spent most of the afternoon in the bathroom. We finally decided it was time to go around five, and wouldn't you know it, as we were packing up to go, Zeke threw up for the first time in his life. I don't know who was more startled by it, him or me. But I think I handled it pretty well all things considered. But then it was a long, miserable ride home as we had to pull over numerous times for Josh to throw up on the side of the road (Zeke didn't want him to feel alone in his misery so he threw up twice one the ride as well). We eventually made it, and I got Deacon fed, both boys in bed, and Josh set up on the couch. Neither one felt much better the next day. Sad.

Here's a picture of my two sick boys. This is right before Zeke threw up again (maybe milk wasn't a good call, but he wanted it SO badly). With Josh and Zeke not feeling well, that meant we couldn't go anywhere on Christmas day. Thankfully, Josh's parents and my father were willing to come visit us so we could see them on Christmas (even if it was only for a few minutes). The next day though, Zeke was feeling much better and Josh was feeling well enough ot make the drive down to his parent's for the next few days. We had a nice time there. Josh's sister and husband were there the whole time too, so we were excited to hang out with them as well. While we were there, we took the opportunity to take Zeke to the ocean for the first time. It was a little chilly, but it was so nice to see the ocean and smell the salt air and feel the sand. Ahh...anyhoo...here's a picture from that day.

After we left Josh's parents on Friday, we went back up to my mom's. Saturday found us heading over to my father's house for an open-house type of thing with his family and Karen's family. Then Sunday was another open house at my mom's for family again. And Monday, or New Year's Eve, it was back to the airport, back on the plane (which went much better this time as the boys slept a bunch more, and it was a shorter flight) and home again, home again, jiggity jig. All in all, a pretty nice trip. Unfortunately, we didn't get to visit near as many friends as we had hoped to, and to all of you we missed, we apologize. But since we're really hoping to be stateside for good come September, we figure there will be plenty of time from then on for visiting. Oh, and, as far as presents went, Zeke is still not into that. I opened everything that was for him and for Deacon and for me. Maybe next year. And that's all from here for now. I'm off to post a lot more of our pictures from our trip on my bebo page. I pray God will bless you all this new year as He has surely blessed us this past one.