Merry Christmas! Our Trip to Texas

We got home today, completing our almost 2 week trip to Corpus Christi, TX. We had so much fun with our family there. It was heart-warming to see Will interact with his grandparents(whom he started calling Go-go or Gra). He took to them immediately and was reaching for them and hugging on them the entire trip. He showed them a fun game called "Pass the Will Around." It goes something like this: walk up to Grandpa and say "Up," then hug him for a minute, then reach for Gram-E, hug her for a minute, then reach for Grandpa again, and repeat until grandparents need a break! He adores his Grandpa Bill, who taught him how to do tickle hands, talk like a pirate, and check out what's going on outside (tree is a new favorite word). Gram-E got to rock Will and read him stories. Auntie Abby taught him how to say, "There you go." While we were in Texas, Will started walking a whole lot more. We were so proud of him walking across the living room to get his Grandpa and Gram-E, and now that we're home he has been walking everywhere.

It would be impossible to write about everything we did, but some of the highlights were: dinners out, date night at the Nutcracker (just Jered and me - yay!), Christmas Eve singing and visiting, downtime watching movies, lots of hugs, an afternoon at the salon and shopping (sans baby), going to church together, seeing my grandmothers, and long talks with my sis. We drove back to San Antonio Sunday afternoon and spent the night with Abby. We got in around 7pm, and our cousin Matt drove down from San Marcos to have dinner with us. I haven't seen him for about 6 yrs, so it was a real treat! I was sad to miss our Waitz cousins, but hopefully we'll have more time to visit next year. Unfortunately part of our vacation was lost to a horrible stomach virus that hit Dad, Mom and me pretty hard. Jered had been sick with what we thought was food poisoning on the 15th, then we all got sick late night on the 20th. Luckily Abby and Will were not sick at all! We also had a 3hr delay getting to Texas, but the bulk of our trip was wonderful and we are full of good memories to tide us over until next time.

As a post-script, if any of you are wondering about Christmas cards from us, we are still waiting on our Christmas portraits to come in. They were taken on November 17th, supposedly plenty of time to get here by Christmas, right? Wrong! Oh well, we live and learn, and you will be getting cards in January instead of December, but with cute photos :-)