Flying head-on into a Tornado

This was Suzanne's facebook status Friday morning "I'm flying head-on into a family tornado. Giddy-up!"  And it was so true.  Almost all of us were all in town for a very short weekend packed with lots of family fun! 

Joe and Katy had a beautiful baby girl earlier this month and we couldn't wait to meet her and smoother her with cuddles.  Isn't she beautiful! 

My brother-in-law graduated from SLU's Med School Friday. He and Barb are packing up their apartment this weekend and moving to CA for his residency.  We're super excited for them, and super excited for Suz cause they'll practically be neighbors, but it's hard to imagine them all living so far away!

We helped my father clean out the garage.  A very small part of that process was Suz and I building a wood pile.  The wood had formerly been stored in the garage and needed to get moved out of the garage.  We teased Daddy that we were trying to make up for the fact that he only had two sons and four daughters.  

The garage clean out was so we could move furniture my parents drove out from my grandparents home this week.  Last weekend they and my dad's siblings and their spouses spent the weekend cleaning out my grandparents home, dividing up the contents among the descendants and load them up into two trucks ... one truck doing the western US, one truck doing the eastern US.  Mom and Dad made a quick stop at our house to unload a few things and catch a night's sleep before heading to St. Louis Thursday.  And Saturday after cleaning and organizing, we moved the furniture staying in St. Louis onto pallets in their garage until Mom decides where to put them inside.  

Joe and Suz also got Mom's impatient bed planted ... one of "our" traditional Mother's Day gifts to her that my brother is so good at making sure happens each year.  

It's been a while since we've done a super quick visit to the parents like this ... Some of the kids and I arrived Friday night, GR brought our two soccer players who had tournaments, Saturday evening (driving my parents car that they'd left at our place), and then we all headed back to KS Sunday afternoon for our last week of school! ... but it was so worth it to see everyone, visit and help my parents get a good chunk of the work they wanted to get done, done this weekend.