I am thankful for a week with family

We had a wonderful time up in Wake Forest, NC at The Rupert household this past week.  Stella, Ruby and I drove up on Monday.  We stopped about half way in Charlotte on the way up to see an old high school friend and travelled the rest of the way without incident. The girls were great.  Ruby slept the whole way and Stella did a wonderful job of entertaining herself in her seat. On Wednesday the rest of our family arrived from Indiana.  My sister, brother-in-law and their four girls and Mom.  Stella had a blast playing with all of her girl cousins.  I rarely saw her as she was busy in the toy room with everyone.  She even slept in the toy room with everyone in a sleeping bag two nights and she really loved that.  I had to lay up there with her the second night till she fell asleep.  As you can imagine it was hard for a 2 year old to relax and fall asleep in a room filled with girls and toys.  Her two oldest cousins, Mary and Andie were awesome and were like second mommies, only fun ones!  They took turns holding Ruby and keeping her company along with all the other girls. In fact, Aunt Laura had to referee the amount of time each girl got to hold her.  She, herself, had to fight for a spot of Ruby time in between the girls holding her.  Andie (in the picture below) was with Ruby about 98% of the time.  Ruby rarely was unhappy, as she was held much of the time. I had a little mini-vacation from mom duty for the week.  And there were times I actually missed my girls they were so looked after by others and busy.  My mom held Ruby one morning while she slept from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 and I was able to sleep in a bit. Thanks Mom  :)

Randy joined us on Thursday for dinner, but had to leave Friday for work.  Fed Ex never sleeps.

We made cookies, decorated their tree, went to a bounce house, and watched movies.  Ruby rolled from her tummy to back twice.  It was a lot of fun and I was sad to go.  We left on Saturday, along with everyone else.  Again, Ruby and Stella were great travelers on the way home.  Stella napped a lot and Ruby, again, slept the whole way, even through our stop for lunch. 

Thanks again to Matt, Kandi, Reagan and Maggie for hosting Thanksgiving this year.  A lot of fond memories were made and it was just so nice to be with everyone.