Well, we're back. It was a great trip, but we're glad to be home, mostly because Little got very very sick in Montana with her first high fever and her first illness that fully incapacitated her for a few days. Even with that, we had a blast at
Aunt Martie's, where Little was able to spend lots of time playing with her cousins, including dress-up for the first time with her three year old cousin. I've got to say, those kids are great! They really went out of their way to try to engage my girls and play with them and help out. No matter how infrequently we visit with them, I think Little will always remember them. She loves all of her cousins so much--one of her favorite things to do is look at pictures of them on their mommies' blogs. Peter and I also really enjoyed getting to know Aunt Martie (Peter's sister) and her kids all over again. It's been a long time and we loved it. It's so sad to leave when you're not sure when you'll see someone again... Aunt Martie is doing an incredible job keeping things together (more than that--keeping them at a level that far surpasses my own day to day level), with a husband in Iraq and several children. I really admire her for that.
After visiting with Aunt Martie's family in Montana, we flew to visit Grammy and Grampy in Anacortes, WA. With them we went on a couple of little birdwatching excursions in Skagit Valley, where we saw numerous bald eagles, rough legged hawks, Northern harriers, snow geese, trumpeter swans, etc, etc. We played Seafarers of Catan and cards and ate fondue, and Little and Littler stayed up really late every night, much to everyone's diappointment. They still have not recovered from this schedule change, which is mostly a result of Little's illness. Then we spent two days driving home and following in the wake of the biggest storm to hit the west coast in a long time. Somehow we missed almost all of the storminess, which is a blessing. Unfortunately, that storm dumped over three inches of rain at home and we missed it. I've never seen that much rain in that short a period of time in my life.
So, now we're back, and we finally got things most of the way back to normal yesterday and today, thanks to the person who needed to drop by to borrow something from me, which kicked me into high gear for about 30 minutes making the house decent enough for a visitor who has never been here before. Whew! All just in time for Littler to be really grumpy with me today. Being a stay at home mom is surprisingly time intensive!
