Fun in Indiana!

We arrived in Indiana to stay with Ryan's family late at night on October 1st. While it was an exhausting week trying to get over jet lag, it was a wonderful time to be with family. Hadassah only woke once each night, usually early morning, wanting to play for a few hours. The first few days we just had a really early morning wake-up, then eventually she would go back to sleep after a bit. The hardest part of the day was waking her from her afternoon nap... I'd give her 3 hours, but she was still SO out of it and usually very cranky, as her body still thought it was night time. But by day 5 she was mostly sleeping all and back to her normal mostly-happy-Hadassah self, and we started feeling a bit more human...

Ryan's sister and her family came for the weekend, so it was wonderful to see them too and see the cousins - just 3 months apart - able to play together more!

 Coming downstairs and seeing sights like this always warmed my heart :)

 Since Hadassah turns two the end of October and Evan turns two in February, we had an early family birthday party for them both.They really liked the chocolate cupcakes!

 Hadassah loved her presents - a baby doll from Grammy and Grandpa with accessories, and a doctor kit from her aunt & uncle!

 Almost every day Daddy and/or grandparents took her to a new park. The swings were always her favorite. For some reason, they don't have swing sets in the playgrounds (that we've seen!) in Shanghai.

 Swinging with Uncle Bobby and Evan made it even more fun!

 When cousins happen to match, it's just another excuse to get fun pictures!

So blessed to be all together for a little while! Wish we had more times like these, but grateful for what we had!

 Hadassah loved it when Grammy and Grandpa would play on the park with her!

 More swing fun and looking like sunshine with new thrift store shirts! So happy to be back in a land where I can understand and find deals on things! :)

 You don't see trees like this where we are in China. And the scene was just so iconic USA, we couldn't stop looking at it and had to take a picture...

One of her favorite things to do when skyping Grandpa was to have him play his harmonica and she run and get her toy whistle. Well, he taught her how to play her own harmonica in person, and she was absolutely thrilled!

 Leaving Hadassah with grandparents allowed us to go on some dates! We enjoyed Culver's and walking along the Ohio river one night, as well as shopping trips with lunch dates and going out to see the "War Room" movie while Hadassah napped and Grammy kept an ear out. It was so SO refreshing to be out so much with my love!

 Tuesday evening some extended family came by. It was great to catch up with everyone, though we only had a brief time. All in all, time in Indiana was too short to do all we wanted to do, but we were glad we at least got to be there for a week before heading to the wedding and then the place we needed to be to have baby!

 On October 8th, we were back at the airport. It was nice to have grandparents to help us check in at the airport - and it was probably one of the smoothest check-ins we've ever had! We love the service Southwest Airlines gives, and I think we're starting to get the hang of flying, like how much nicer it is when you keep carry-ons to a minimum! And after the long flight before, facing two flights of just a couple hours each hardly seemed like anything.

 Helping Grandpa with the suitcase. "Travel puppy" (her adventure buddy - helps so much to have a stuffed animal to hold when you have to wait in lines!) had a nice seat in the handle :)

 Someone gave her a little airplane to assemble, so she worked on it with Grandpa and Daddy since we intentionally gave ourselves extra time at check-in.

 We watched some planes take off, and then had to say goodbye. Thankfully it wasn't for the year... we'll see them again when they come down after baby Ellie is born!