Christmas Trip - Day 4

We had a very low key Saturday after Christmas. We stayed in the whole day, and tried to enjoyed the last few hours with the family before we had to drive off. Unfortunately, Patrick and Laurin had to work, so we only saw them for a few minutes each. We spent the rest of the day packing and spending time with Grandmother, Mom, and Dad.

We took off at about 7pm again and it took us 12 hours to drive back. A storm rolled through Shreveport earlier in the day and we managed to catch up with it after a couple hours' drive. Unfortunately, Daniel woke up crying when the rain started pounding us. We stopped after a little while and burped him thinking that maybe his tummy was hurting. But soon after we got in the car he started crying again. I got into the back seat with him and tried to play and talk to him to try to calm him down. Nothing helped until, out of desperation, I started singing old Russian songs to him. He calmed down immediately! I was shocked! I did not realize that my crappy, out of tune singing, can have such an effect on him. But at that point I was ready to sing for the rest of the trip if that was necessary. I sang for about half an hour to him, and than we played his new favorite game: "through everything away and let mama get it". At the next stop (it was close to midnight) we fed him another bottle and he fell asleep and slept all the way home.

If I have not mentioned it before, Daniel is a very lucky little boy! He has 9 grandparents and great-grandparents still living. On Stephen's side they are: Great-grandmother Evelynn (or as Daniel will call her Gigi), Great-grandmother Ruby (Granny), and Grandparents John and Monnie. On my side they are: my maternal grandmother Lidia, my mother Nina, my paternal grandparents Emil and Inna, and my father Gregory. So I am on a quest to take pictures of Daniel with all the different predecessors. I am not sure if we will ever be able to get them all together to take a group picture... Well, here are pictures with Gigi:

And the four generations of the Cole clan:

This is it! The Christmas 2008 is over, it has been a very happy and busy time for us. We really enjoyed going over to Shreveport and seeing everybody there. Thank you Grandmother, Mom, and Dad for making us feel as welcome as ever! We hope that you will be able to come out and visit in March for Daniel's 1st Birthday and in April for Stephen's 40th Birthday and maybe even sooner :) We really appreciate everything and love you more then ever!