Christmas in FL!

After all the Christmas programs and parties with the kids, it was time to pack up and head to Florida for Christmas! After a 2 day drive, we arrived in Jacksonville and guess who was already there? BABY BRENDAN!!!  The kids were so excited to meet him!  I, of course, took him right out of Aunt Ginny's hands right away and the kids took turns meeting him.  Juliette meets him for the first time...

Then we moved over to the couch so the kids could hold him...Baby Brendan looks a little worried about this idea...

Cousins!!

Ben's turn to hold him!

Then it was time to put him in his new bouncy seat.  Don't worry Uncle Chris, there's plenty of help getting him all settled in!

The kids actually had a blast playing with their new cousin.  They held him a lot and really enjoyed making him smile and laugh.  And Baby Brendan seemed to like it too.  He slept through the night most of the time we were there - I think our kids tired him out!  So, Uncle Chris and Aunt Ginny, if you want to borrow the kids for a weekend (you know, so the baby will sleep through the night), just let us know...I'm sure it would be a very restful weekend for you!

I think Ben was particularly happy to have another boy in the family!

Although seeing Baby Brendan for the first time was very exciting, we also got to spend time with the great-grandparents, which we don't get to see nearly often enough!  The kids really enjoyed playing with Mimi (below), Nana and GrandPatch!  The girls especially were happy to have two more women to play dolls with!

And Baby Brendan got to meet his great-grandparents for the first time too!  Here he is with Nana!

And Mimi!

As I said, the kids held him as often as they could.  They had to wash hands first, so they would see Brendan was available (meaning not eating or sleeping, which as 10 week old baby he still does for most of the day) and run to wash hands as fast as they could.  Abbey would say, "Mom, I have to go wash hands so I can pet Brendan!"  I wasn't sure what she meant at first, but she liked to rub, or "pet", his head...

Juju even got her chance to hold him.

Mimi and Brendan...

We got to FL only a few days before Christmas, so before we knew it, it was Christmas Eve and time to go to mass!  Here are the kids (Juju slept through the entire mass) checking out the manger scene at Church.  Thank you to Madgie, Patch and the great-grandparents for getting to mass super early and saving us some seats!

After mass, trying to take a family picture...

 

Several shots later, we finally came up with a good one!

Then it was PJ time.  Juliette shows Uncle Chris her Christmas PJ's!

We had a special treat in that Aunt Ginny's family came down to spend Christmas with us too since it was Brendan's first Christmas.  Part of their annual tradition is singing carols around the piano, which was very nice.  We all really enjoyed this too!  Luckily Madgie and Patch have a Baby Grand freshly tuned that Mr. Miraldi could play on while we all sang along (he even took requests!).

This is just a super cute picture I thought.

 Daddy and Abbey enjoyed the singing too.

 And Ben played along on the kids piano too!

 Juliette and Mommy

 Then it was time to select the cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.  Since this was Brendan's first time, we wanted to make sure to show him how to do it (we might not be with him next Christmas so we needed to make sure he could do it on his own next year).

 Take a good look Brendan!  Then it was off to bed to see if anyone special were to come through the night!