Welcome Home, Annie!

Evan and I visited West Virginia to welcome Annie home from Afghanistan. It's hard to believe he couldn't even walk the last time she saw him. Crazy!

We left at bedtime and he was perfect the entire way. Of course, when we got there, everyone made a big deal about him and then he was excited and didn't want to sleep. As I was laying in bed at 2am and looking at him in his pack and play, he was laughing, jumping and dancing. Lovely. We left at naptime for the trip back. He napped for a total of 50 minutes (instead of 2 hours) but sat in the back chatting the entire time. He enjoyed a few snacks (totally breaking my no food in the car rule) and didn't even need to be bribed with the stack of books I had ready to hand him.

We had a great time catching up with Annie, Charles and Michaela. Although there was some non-sharing on both their parts, Evan and Michaela had a great time together.

Some very rare sharing ;) 

We had a Welcome Home party for Annie. Since we missed Christmas, Grandma Barbi and Grandpa Ed brought Evan's gifts to the party. It was books and books and books. While all the other kids were playing on the dance floor chasing balloons and each other, Evan sat on the sidelines and read his books. Such an awesomely weird and cool kid. I love his love for books (most of the time.)

Totally oblivious to the playing kids behind him...

Once he finally played, he carried that balloon around in his mouth.
All the kids kept tattling that he was biting the balloon. To which
I replied, "Well, he'll learn his lesson, won't he?"
Does that make me a bad mom? Hehe.

I made a tutu for Michaela! 

We were there from Thursday night until Sunday afternoon. It was both too short and too long. Evan missed his Daddy (and I missed him too) and we both missed our own home and our own routines. It was so wonderful to see the cousins play though and to chillax with Annie, Chase and Mom. Most of all, I'm just so glad Annie's back. We're destined to be long distance sisters, but I'd much rather be hundreds of miles apart than thousands of miles apart.

The Jacksons

♥