Howdy, y'all

So here we are, in Texas. This trip seemed to completely sneak up on me-- I don't think it was till Tuesday or Wednesday that I realized we'd be flying off on Saturday (yesterday). I have to say, it felt nice to have the trip feel so much more "low-key"-- only a 3 hour flight. Non-stop. No passports. No crossing countries. We just needed to entertaining our wiggle worm for those 3 hours on one plane, and then we'd be there. Sweet.

D did great on the flight-- he slept a bit, played a bit, hardly fussed. He didn't sleep great last night, though. My step-dad set up a hand-me-down crib in our room, and it's the first time D's slept in one, and I don't know if it was that or the newness of everything else and a long day, etc, but he had a bit of a hard time going to sleep, and then woke up quite often over the course of the night. He's been in a great mood all day today, though, even with the onslaught of people.

We hadn't realized this when we planned this trip, but this weekend was the celebration for my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. As such, all of my mom's (six) siblings came to town, and they had a big fancy shindig and dinner last night. Then today before heading back out to their respective home states, they stopped by here for lunch and to see D. It's been a while since I'd seen many of them, not to mention some of my cousins who are growing up at an alarming rate. And they all loved D. D seemed to love my cousins, too-- at one point he was sitting in one of their laps, the rest in a big circle around him (all of them being between 6-14 years old), and he was loving all the attention. It was so touching... and also so great to watch grammy and grampa so in awe of their (first!) great-grandson. It's rare to get all of the uncles and aunts together in one place (most of them, anyway-- Mike wasn't there) so fate did a great job there.

I also found out today that my step-dad planted a tree in the backyard for D when he was born (my niece Ryan has her own tree, too). We'll be needing to take a picture of D next to his tree before this trip is over. =P

(The picture above was taken this morning. I had just stepped outside to take pictures of this absolutely gorgeous cat that's been hanging out near the house a ton in recent months, and Cristina was holding D and, when I looked up he was there at the window, looking out like that. Had to be captured.)