It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

Last week, due to God's amazing provision and His working out some details, we were able to travel up North the MS and AL to visit our families!  Since we weren't able to go back home at Christmas, we were really excited about this trip.  I was a little anxious about how JennaBeth would travel and how tight it would be in our Ford Taurus, but JennaBeth did great and Mike did a really good job of packing the trunk of our car.  I don't think a speck of sand would have fit after our luggage, pack-n-play and everything else was in there, but he got it all in!

On our way up on last Friday, we stopped at the Russell Stover Factory Store.

I wish you could have seen Bentley's eyes when we walked in the front door!  I don't think he could believe what he saw!  He is my little "nack" (snack) eater.  Even after he eats his breakfast, he always asks, "Now can I have a nack?".

JennaBeth even had her a little box of chocolates picked out.  She wasn't happy when we put them back!

Everyone left with smiles on their faces after getting to pick out their favorite thing.  Bentley ended up with some Milk Chocolate Footballs.  Cecily had an Elvis tin full of an assortment of chocolates and some caramel bars, which she was forced to share with me!  The neatest thing is that Mike had an array of sugar free things to pick from.  He got some for himself and picked up some for his father who is also diabetic.  However, my sweet husband learned a hard lesson.  You can't snack on sugar free candy for 900 miles without, shall we say some uncomfortable side effects!

We usually go to his parents in AL first, but since my mom could only take one day off from work, we went to Meridain, MS first and spent the weekend and Monday with her.  We got to her place about 2:30 am Saturday morning.  Surprisingly, we got the kids in the house and right back to sleep.

Saturday afternoon we all went over to Mike's sister's house just about 20 minutes or so from my mom's in Whynot, MS.  She has a beautiful, rustic home and I always love going there.  If we ever get to build our own place, I think I want one just like hers!  She is a teacher, and this would be the only opportunity to visit with her.  What was so exciting about this visit is that she nor Mike's parents had met JennaBeth yet!

And JennaBeth immediately put her Papaw to work...

 

She got real lazy taking steps on her own with everyone "walking" her around.

 

Adam, Abby's middle child, has always loved trains.  Knowing Bentley loved trains also, he pulled his old Thomas set out.  What you see on the pool table isn't even a drop in the bucket to the trains and tracks this child owns!  Bentley was in heaven.  If Russell Stover didn't give him a heart attack at age 4, I thought this was going to!  We were at Abby's maybe about 5 hours or more and that boy didn't move from this table except to use the bathroom and he just about didn't make it in time!!!  I had to make him take a break to eat and drink something.

JennaBeth even wanted in on the train action...

Her Aunt Abby brought out her daughter's old baby dolls for JennaBeth to play with, but she would have nothing to do with them...

However, she did take quiet a liking to her Uncle Bruce...

He was one of the first people she wanted to go to when we got to their house that afternoon.  Not sure about this, but she likes the men!

JennaBeth also enjoyed hanging out in Morgan's room with her and her big sister...

Cecily and Morgan enjoyed some scrabble with Mike's mom (affectionately known as Mamaw Judy)...

Cecily had a lot of fun getting reacquainted with Morgan.  I think they are two of the prettiest girls I know...

We found out how fast these two could move when Adam and Bentley ran a little mouse into where the girls were...

This mouse incident was one of the only things that tore Bentley away from the train table for any length of time.  Go figure!

Mike had really been missing his baby sister and had a good time getting to see her.  

I can only imagine these kinds of things happening, oh thirty something years ago...

Our time over at Abby's was way too short, but with only a week to spare and lots more family to see we headed back to my mom's to get some rest before going to church with her and my stepdad on Sunday morning.

As you can imagine, I took a ba-zillion pictures and the retinas of your eyes are probably about to detach as it is with this post.  I'll cover the rest of our week in two more post tomorrow and Thursday.

Coram Deo,

Jennifer