They Were Here and Now They're Gone...

I am writing this as my parents have just left with James for the airport (he's dropping them off and then going into work), we had a GREAT time! And, like all good times, it went by too fast. We had fabulous weather, it was only gray and cloudy the day that they arrived. Other than that, we were fine with coats or jackets and sometimes we had to take those off! We packed a lot of sight-seeing in, the first day my parents felt the effects of terrible jet lag, so we mostly stayed at home and visited and they rested a bit but we did venture out to the Eppstein Castle in the town over from us in the late afternoon. The following days we visited Heidelberg, St. Goar, Rothenberg, Trier, and the last day (yesterday) we had more of a down day, giving Grandpa and Thomas a chance just to play outside and also we left the kids with grandma and grandpa so we could go to the travel agency and work out the details of all of our summer flights, when we got home, we all loaded up one more time and drove down to the center of Wiesbaden to look at the buildings and walk through a couple of their pretty walking parks.

The only downside of their visit was that both Toby and my dad had horrible head colds. Toby didn't sleep much at all the first two nights and my dad slept terribly the entire trip.

It was fun to get to see so much, and to have the adults outnumber the children again. I have a friend here that said it stresses her out more to go on trips with her parents and her kids, but for me it was the opposite. My children were completely spoiled with attention the past week. I was a little worried about Toby, since the last time he saw my dad, he wasn't quite six months old and the last time he saw my mom he wasn't quite seven months old, so I didn't know how long it would take him to warm up to them, but it took about 90 seconds! He never cried or acted afraid, he just kind of studied them for about 90 seconds. I think in his mind he was trying to figure out how the people he sees all of the time through my computer screen (through Skype) had made it to the front door. It was neat to see him build a relationship with them both. But also neat to realize how much Skype helped that along (if you can't tell, I'm a big fan of the web cam!).

Before they arrived, I tried to have a talk with Thomas about how he was going to have to "share" grandma and grandpa...Thomas did great, and since Toby naps and went to sleep earlier while they were here (I let Thomas stay up instead of going to bed at the same time with Toby like usual) he also got his own individual time with them. He was also their roommate while they were here so they had their own pillow talk each night, as well. But, it was funny to see the jealousy in Toby, especially with Grandpa. Those two were always trying to see who could sit on Grandpa. It was really cute!

And so today, as my parents make the long trip back to Utah (my poor mom will be back on a plane to Frankfurt again in exactly eight weeks, will stay three days and then fly back to Utah with Thomas, Toby and I on June 1st) I will get started on the mountain of laundry (I only did two loads while they were here) and start putting away all the "stuff" that is lying around here after five days of road trips. I also have Easter decorations to take down. I figured I would keep them up while my mom and dad were here but now they are really getting on my nerves (the Easter decorations, not my parents!)... I applied for a weeks' worth of "vacation" at Thomas' preschool and this is the last day of that (meaning I'll get credited a weeks worth of tuition next month) so I had intended on staying at home today, but then I got a call last night saying that soccer practice starts tonight...so, so much for that plan! I guess I'll also find out when his first game is tonight.

(I will post another post with more pictures later.)

Until later,

Emily