Aunty Joye's FUN Chaos

Last weekend Jocelyn and I took a trip to Connecticut to visit Aunty Joye and the clan.  As always, the trip was a lot of fun, but so exhausting!!  Joye and I always stay up way too late talking, and Jocelyn is always up late hanging out with the kids, but true to form, she doesn't want to miss anything, so when the kids start moving around in the morning, she's up and ready too.  So late nights and early mornings for all...   not a good combination.  But there's no way we would give up a minute of the fun.

Every kid Jocelyn turned to, and there are five of them by the way, jumped at the chance to play with her -- snowball fights, legos, Nerf guns, ponies, didn't matter what it was.  We pretty much walked through the front door and I didn't see her the whole weekend, unless I went looking for her.  She had a blast!

Looks like she fits right in!

Top row:  Alex and Abbie
Middle:  DJ and Hannah
Bottom: Ben and my happy camper

Abbie is working on an agricultural project in school and she is raising baby chicks in the basement.  The family lives out in the country, by the way.  These 33 chicks will be added to the already 20 something outside, along with the 9 ducks...

Not surprisingly, 33 fuzzy, cute baby chicks were quite the draw.  Jocelyn loved petting them and feeding them.

Throwing snowballs and shooting Nerf guns!

Mommy and Jocelyn are still trying to recover from our lack of sleep, but our trip to Aunty Joye's was so much fun!  The kids want us to come back next week.  Oh how we wish we could!!

NICU Reunion

Today was a special treat.  After 4 1/2 years without, the hospital Jocelyn was born in, finally did another NICU reunion.  It's been 5 years since Jocelyn was born, so it's hard to remember all the nurses and doctors. Over the course of 33 days, there were a lot of them.  But we got to see two of the most important ones today.

Dr. Blechman was Jocelyn's primary doctor.

And Nurse Susan was pretty special as well.  Because of her, we got to hold Jocelyn for the first time when she was 8 days old.

Unfortunately, the one we wanted to see the most, was Nurse Joanna, and she was not there.  Lucky for her, but not so lucky for us, she retired last year and moved to Florida.  I gave Susan my email to pass on to her.  It would be nice to be in touch with her again.  In homage to our Mommy Joanna...

The reunion had some fun activities for kids.  They had some dancing.  And a puppeteer.















And the kids got little stuffed ponies, cowboy hats, and balloons, and they got their faces painted.  No surprise, Jocelyn got a unicorn!















Afterwards, we got our picture taken, just because.

The oddest thing about today?  The last time I was at this banquet facility, was 27 years ago for my prom.  Yikes!

Discovered this news article today about last nights event.  If you look closely, you can see Jocelyn in a couple places!
http://foxbaltimore.com/news/features/featured/stories/howard-county-general-celebrates-years-nicu-success-706.shtml#.UT3O-hzU_2p