Two weeks of Christmas

We headed south for two weeks to see family in both North and South Carolina.  We flew to North Carolina first and Lilly did great on the flight, although we were all very cramped (poor Matt and his never ending legs - they aren't built for those tiny seats).

We hadn't seen my sister and her family since Lilly's birthday, six months earlier.  Lilly took to her Aunt JoAnn instantly, right out of the car in fact (it doesn't hurt that we look and sound so much alike).  Lilly was so excited to play with her cousins, Mikey (4) and Sara (almost 3).  That night, Lilly surprised all of us by finally taking her first steps!!!  Seeing her cousins running all around must have done the trick!  She was on fire and kept standing up and running towards her Aunt JoAnn.  Eleven steps in a row was her record that night.  She must have exhausted herself because she really didn't try to walk much for the rest of the trip.  Please excuse our high pitched excitement in this video.

A day later, Matt's dad drove all the way from South Carolina to pick us up and take us back to their house on Fripp Island.  Lilly wasn't crazy about being in the car for over four hours, but all in all she did pretty good.  We spent a week in Fripp and had a nice time.  Lilly really liked riding around in her grandparent's red golf cart and even now that we've been home for a few weeks she still keeps saying, "Gamma, Cuppa (that's what she calls her grandpa), red golf cart!"  There are tons of wild deer that graze on the island.  They are very tame and let you get within inches of them.  Lilly got really excited seeing them and called them "rein-da-deer."

We had a very nice lazy Christmas day.  We stayed in our PJ's all day and opened a ridiculous amount of presents from "Gamma" and "Cuppa."  Lilly had fun with all of her new toys and wrapping paper.

A couple days later we celebrated with Matt's aunts, uncles and cousins.  Lilly took a long time to warm up.  But to be fair, she went down for a nap to an empty house and when she woke up there was an entire room full of people she didn't recognize.  She finally came out of her shell when it was time to exchange gifts.  She spent a good portion of the night crawling around with her shoes on her hands (one of her new favorite things to do).

We headed back to my sister's house in North Carolina and were greeted by a full house.  We knew my mother would be there but my brother Charles, his wife Sherri and my niece Emma made a surprise visit all the way from New Jersey.  Unfortunately that was their last night there, but we were really excited to get that time with everyone.

On New Year's Eve we had a nice quiet night playing games and drinking wine.  The next day we did a New Year's Day afternoon countdown with the kids. We had a great visit with our families and were sad to go home.