It's a Wrap

And thus we come to the end of our trip. A few sights and stories to round out the tale:

- We spent the entire time in Illinois sick. Tired, cranky, coughy, stuffy-nosed sick. It has lasted SO LONG. It began a few days before we left for my parents and we're still trying to shake off the last remnants (dang cough). That's two and a half weeks! I'm sure we passed it to a few people while there. Now, it was nice to be sick at my parents house- there was one particular day when both Sean and I felt gross, so we let my parents take care of the kids while we rested. But I would have much preferred to spend the whole time together energized and healthy. It didn't stop us from doing some fun things but I always felt it by the end of the day. I didn't even bother contacting old friends from home, I didn't want to get them sick, too!

- Every time the boys woke up, they cried. The super sob, takes-a-few-minutes-to-calm-down kind of cry. My guesses as to why are 1) waking up not in their own room, 2) feeling sick, 3) the pack n play mats were  harder than their mattresses so maybe they were a little achy. But it was heartbreaking each time it happened, my poor bugaboos.

- We didn't get any snow while we were there. Well, that's not completely true. It started to snow a wee bit while we were packing up to head to the airport. There was an itty bitty teeny pile of accumulation on the edge of the grass. We showed it to the boys before we got into the car but they didn't care about it at all (there was hardly anything to care about!). I know they would have loved to play in some real snow. I guess we'll have to go back sometime :)

- Mom and Dad had a perfect pair of little kid chairs. Liam and Dash got a kick out of hopping in and out so easily. And they'd look so proud sitting up so tall.

- We discovered that my niece and I are hair twinners. Lucky Olivia. I wish I had some tricks to share on how to make this kind of hair look fabulous but I don't have any.

- One of the boys (maybe it was Dash?) at one point was adamantly asking for milk, which he received, but then he wanted to go play some more. The above photo shows where we discovered he left his milk. Clever boy.

- We spent quite a lot of time on the stairs. My dad was adding some chair railing onto the wall side of the stairway, so we hung out there a lot to help. Dash became an experienced leveler and Liam expertly took measurements. Dad had recently finished doing this same treatment to the dining room and hallway- You can get an idea of it from this picture I already posted.

It looks so good. It makes us want to fancy up our house. But then we remember that Sean is a busy med student and we live off of school loans. Sigh.

- I've mentioned it before, but Liam and Dash really enjoyed being around their older cousins. Luckily, I think their cousins liked them right back. Sometimes they're playmates, sometimes they're little dolls to dress up (as seen in the above photos, taken by Jenny and Olivia). Whatever it was, my kids liked the attention.

And now I say goodbye to our lovely holiday vacation. Twas beautiful while it lasted.