Meet the Fam

We went to the town of my birth today so that Devin could be introduced to both of his great grandmothers, a great aunt and some cousin kids (I think there's a more formal term for the children of one of my cousins, but let's face it, no one these days really knows for sure what it is.)  Unfortunately some of the changes I made on the camera in hopes of getting good shots of the baby without the flash seem to have stuck even when I switched back to automatic settings and lots of my pictures were overexposed.  Hopefully Mom got better ones.

We met at a fast food joint near the highway.  Thankfully we didn't get snarled up in the construction around that area (which Liam was thought was very cool - what with all the diggers).  Relatively little time off-highway combined with a new-found pacifier sucking skill combined to equal relatively little crying on the part of the baby in the car.  Of course once we got the the restaurant he had lots of willing arms to hold him and found no reason to wake up, let alone cry.

Granny, who is scheduled to have a heart cath tomorrow spent part of the day with five of her great grandchildren.

Grandma Jewel, otherwise known as GG commented that we don't get many girls on that side of the family.  So far we have one girl and five boys.

My mom's sister Kitty brought my cousin Pate's kids.  Not her grandchildren, she's chipping in in the midst of a sort of family crises.  While Granny is needing to figure out what's going on with her heart Pate has contracted Lyme disease and is in the hospital with meningitis - possibly a complication.  Have you ever seen that episode of Mash where Klinger comes to the CO with another letter about all the crises in his family - and the CO pulls out all the previous ones he's produced?  Our family feels a little like that right now.

Riley enjoyed holding the baby.  Jonathan, in the background was not interested.

Liam got some early birthday presents including a bean bag chair from Grammy.

 Mary Elizabeth also wanted to hold Devin.

Grammy got to hold him for at least a few minutes.

Liam got this present from my Aunt Kathy.  All the way home he was looking forward to trying it out.  He would have liked to have opened it in the van, but we convinced him that the resulting chaos would NOT be fun.

I thought he might take a nap holding the box, but he put it down after a while and did not take a nap in the end.

He did spend a good bit of time putting the set together when we got home.  Thanks to the goofy camera settings I haven't managed to get a good picture, but here's a shot of him in action with a car made from some leftover parts.

I seem to have made it through the day in spite of the. worst. night. in Devin and Mommy land last night and no naps for me today.  Remember that pacifier I mentioned earlier?  It was successfully introduced at about 4 this morning in a desperate attempt to get at least a few hours of sleep.  We'll see how I fare tomorrow with fewer arms to help hold and less adrenalin.