Whew! What a crazy trip that was – I’m just now catching my breath. Here’s a brief summary of our trip so you understand what I mean when I say we are all painfully exhausted (in a good way).

We left Seattle around 10pm last Wednesday and arrived in Baltimore Thursday morning at 8 (eastern time). Anna did really well – fussed for the first 20 minutes on the plane, then conked out till we got to Detroit, woke up for a while, and then slept the rest of the way until we got to Grandma & Grandpa Stchur’s house. We spent all day Thursday there resting up. Friday morning we left to drive up to New Jersey for Mike & Amanda’s wedding. Anna slept pretty much the whole way except for a pretty long pit stop to eat and have the biggest diaper explosion yet. (Seriously, everything is soaking in Clorox2 as we speak…) Oh, and she managed to pee on the parking lot several times as Steve was attempting to clean the poop off her changing pad. We got to NJ in time for the rehearsal and dinner (Steve was in the wedding party.) Steve and I had to take turns missing the dinner to rock Miss Anna to sleep. She put up a pretty good fight before finally giving in (just as dinner was breaking up, of course).

Saturday was the wedding, which was beautiful, followed by an awesome arab-style reception complete with hookah bar and arab dancing. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos from the wedding since Steve was busy fulfilling his groomsmen duties and I was busy fulfilling my Mommy duties. We left the reception early around 9:45 and drove down to Princeton to stay with Steve’s cousin for the night. Thank goodness for them – that put us a bit closer to Baltimore for our drive the next morning. We got quite turned around getting to their house and didn’t get there until midnight. At that point we decided not to try to make it to Baltimore for the 9:30am Liturgy but to shoot for just Luke’s baptism at 11am.

As it was, we just made it to church as parishioners were venerating the cross at the end of Liturgy. I passed Anna off to Grandma Stchur and Laurel passed Luke off to me to be baptized. He did so well, and just like his Godsister, hardly made a peep when he was dunked. (I have a great photo of this, but spaces won’t allow us to post naked baby pictures. Sheesh.) Grandma took Anna up to the choir loft at one point, and apparently she didn’t like it so much. I was holding Luke and all of a sudden I got that pain in my blood that only a Mommy gets when she hears her baby crying and can’t reach her. After she came back down, she was fine… apparently, she prefers St. Katherine’s choir to St. Andrew’s It was a beautiful day. We are so blessed to have Jamie, Laurel and Luke in our lives. And it was so wonderful to be back at St. Andrew’s and to let Anna meet her spiritual family there.

After the baptism, we spent the afternoon and that night at Jamie and Laurel’s place and we finally got to relax and let the babies get to know each other a bit. Anna’s gums were bothering her at one point and thought Luke’s arm would make a good teething ring. It was pretty funny. Luke is such a doll and is the spitting image of Jamie. We left their house around 10am on Monday and met up with my family at the Inner Harbor. It was such a nice day, although by the afternoon it was a scorcher and we all went home a bit sweaty. My entire family was able to make it, which is a rare event, so it was an extra special afternoon. We didn’t do much other than get some lunch and enjoy the nice day while Anna got to spend some time with her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Anna had had enough by 3pm, so we headed back up to Steve’s parents’ house, where we stayed until our plane left on Tuesday at 6pm.

She had a hard time going to sleep on the first flight, but once she fell asleep, she stayed out until we arrived in Seattle, which was amazing. We got home around 1am and after she ate, she went back to sleep until 6:30 this morning. I’m so amazed that she adjusted to east coast time no problem and then switched back to west coast time again right away. All in all, she did so well the whole trip considering how busy we were and how many people she met and wanted to hold her. By the last two days, she was done with other people holding her and wouldn’t even let Steve take her. She wanted nothing but all Mama, all the time.

So that was our trip! I wish we could have stayed longer and had more time to spend with everyone. But it’s nice to be home and I’m looking forward to a week of down time before some visits from both Steve’s and my sisters.