Friday John and I went to Chance and Dina's to visit the new babies. They are so cute & tiny & made John and I NOT miss those good old days. I never knew how wonderful babies were until I had my own........ and then got to hold someone else's and give them back! Check them out if you have a chance at http://duttontwins.blogspot.com/. They are just too cute for words but their pictures do them a little more justice.
Then on Saturday we all went to Mimi's house for pictures. It was somewhat, okay-VERY chaotic, trying to get a picture of everyone at the same time. We need an awesome PhotoShop program to enable us to take fifty pictures then choose pieces of each one to make one good photo. Capturing all of those kids is near impossible- they don't even look at the camera at the same time, let alone smile or look coherent. But we did the best we could with what we had!
My aunt Patti and my cousin Megan came and Megan brought her beautiful little girl, Evelyn, who was the best baby I have ever witnessed. She would do a half cry/whine when she was hungry then Megan would give her a bottle and she would hold it up herself and she was back to happy! It was un-natural but I only say that out of pure jealousy & admiration. Megan is a wonderful mom & very lucky to have such a great baby.
For the rest of the trip we bounced around between Mom's house, Matt's house & Dad's house. The girls had their first horseback ride and enjoyed all of Matthew & Hannah's outdoor toys. They have way more than we do since they 
can play with outdoor toys year-round in Texas! Bella really liked the car-type toys and was pretty protective of her rides.Then Emma found her inner-Texan and found Matthew's John Deere tractor. She couldn't figure out how to make it drive but
she definitely gave it her best shot. And she likes to help out sometimes so she gave the driveway a good trim while we were saddling up Buddy for a ride. They had so much fun being able to play outside and enjoy a little sunshine. In fact, 
while we were doing these very activities I received a text message from John who was back in Virginia and he was watching it snow on the back porch.
Emma liked being on Buddy with her Uncle Matt, whom she is very partial to, but Bella didn't enjoy her ride all that much. She is more of the soccer/snowboarding/adventurous type than a relaxing horse-ride on a Sunday afternoon kind of girl. Both girls are very fond of their Uncle Matt. He always knew exactly what they wanted, which usually requires more energy than any one person has. They always knew to go to him if they wanted to be thrown in the air or do flips off his belly. Somehow kids can smell a "dad" when they meet one and they knew right off that their Uncle Matt would show them a good time!
