A weekend of celebrations

As Ted’s dad pointed out…its hard work being a granddaughter.

After months of travel back and forth to Papas and Grams’ houses, starting just before Teddy was born and ending at approximately 3:30 yesterday afternoon when we pulled into our driveway from the MA to NC drive, Katherine is back for the long haul. I’ll give her a few weeks before she declares “I want to go to Papa and Gram’s” because she enjoyed every minute of it. In fact, we barely got a goodbye during this last trip when she headed out the door with Papa and Gram Meagher a few days ahead of us. What’s not to enjoy when you are the center of attention for weeks at a time? Somebody’s gotta do it.

This latest trip was a big one with celebrations for both of the kids. Katherine left town as a three year old and returned as a four year old. That’s right my baby girl turned four this past Saturday. F.O.U.R. The toddler is gone; she’s a full fledged preschooler. We’re only one year away from kindergarten. How did this happen?

No matter to Katherine, as far as she was concerned there was some celebrating to do…which meant presents. She was kind enough to meet everyone at the door and offer to take their present off their hands…and just as bummed when I told her that she had to wait until everyone got there before she could open them (yes, I am becoming that mother, just wait until we start working on thank you cards). I am sure this seemed like an eternity. Oh, but the scooter! We had that waiting for her first thing in the morning and she ran right over to it and hopped on. In fact, that was her mode of transportation to get anywhere, inside or out, for the next two days. Walking is highly overrated.

Sunday was Teddy’s big day. He was baptized by my father’s cousin (who also baptized me as an infant, married Ted and me and baptized Katherine). The little man was as good as gold for it too, hardly let out a peep in church. We won’t talk about what he was working on at the other end. Unfortunately for him though, his big day (and first trip to Papa and Gram Meagher’s house!) coincided with the onset of some major teething. Poor thing is just dripping in drool and chewing whatever he can get his hands on. But being the good little baby that he is, he seems to be doing it with smile…most of the time.

Summer is very quickly coming to a close, we’re all settling back into the routine. I’ve blogged before on how I enjoy this time of year and I’m definitely looking forward to the season change this time around. Major reason being that a major project is wrapping up at work, one that is taking up just about all of my time. Everyone involved is looking forward to seeing the report finished and sent off to the feds next month. Of course, once that’s done I have to turn my chair around and face everything that has been pushed aside for the past few months but even that pile doesn’t seem as bad as the monumental task that this project was. Trust me; there’ll be some much deserved celebrating around the office on October 1st. Then here’s the kicker, it’s an evaluation that runs on a three year cycle. Meaning after we hand in the report we’ll be right back to the drawing board at year one. But for at least one day (maybe two) we’ll bask in the glory of a job well done.

I’m hoping to catch up on a few non-work things in the coming weeks, one of them being the list of blog posts and photo albums. I feel like I hardly mentioned this trip beforehand and then…surprise!...we’re there and back. Tons of great pictures to upload…I will get to them, I promise.