Aunt Rachel and Will

We had a nice whirl-wind trip down to Houston this past weekend. We had been planning the trip for a while as Aunt Rachel and Will were flying in from North Carolina.

Then Snowmageddon happened and it looked like no flights would be leaving North Carolina. Aunt Rachel, more tenacious than even I am, went down to the airport in person and made a flight happen, Saturday morning, through sheer force of will.

We had to wait, though, through Saturday morning to make sure they would be coming, so we left for Houston around six in the morning Saturday, returning home around eleven in the morning Sunday.

But what a lot of fun we packed into those 24+ hours!

After meeting Aunt Rachel and Will for lunch, we sent Aunt Rachel on to Gram's house to shower and rest and we took Will and Sydney on to Moody Gardens.

This was the point at which Jeremy said to Will, "Now you're going to find out the bad part of going places with your Aunt Rebecca... you have to stop and take pictures of everything."

Will was cool with that -- he said his mom was the same way.

In fact, Will even got into the spirit of things and was orchestrating pictures for me. "Hey," he said, "You should take a picture like I'm in jail."

Okay.

Once again, the penguins were Sydney's favorite part. So once again, we bought a penguin (or two) in the gift shop for Sydney to take back to the real penguins to show off.

Two of the goofiest, most lovable children.

And penguins.

The big penguin that Will has is his; the small one is his gift to his sister, Jaime.

We had a family dinner/informal baby shower for Rachel and Jaime. It was so nice to have all of the Houston area family together in one place. I also love how my cousin Danielle and her family are blended right in. As I told Kim, family is the people who will do anything for you and Danielle was the one who brought the cake and had offered to do decorations, if I had wanted them, for Rachel.

Sunday morning before we left, we ate breakfast with Rachel, Will, Gram and the Gonzalez's and then did some shopping at Barnes and Nobles.

I am so glad that Aunt Rachel and Will made it to Texas one more time before the baby comes and I cannot wait until we roadtrip out to North Carolina to see them this summer.