Christmas in Illinois

We were lucky enough to celebrate Christmas 3 times this year: once in Illinois to visit my mom's family, once in Colorado to visit Mike's family, and one of our very own in the bay area.

So with our long vacation ahead of us we packed the bags, woke up at 3am, took a deep breath, and headed out the door to catch a 6am flight out of SFO to head to Illinois. Once we arrived in St. Louis we had a 3 hour drive to Eldorado, IL (just a blip on the map but not in my heart) for our annual family gathering. Considering the circumstances, Cavin did really well on the trip. We had one lay over, two flights, plus the long drive and he arrived full of energy!

There was a lot of anticipation regarding Cavin's reaction to meeting Uncle Bill. You see, Uncle Bill is probably the nicest man I know. He LOVES kids and kids LOVE him. However, babies...not so much. He has a zero for 2 track record for the babies in our family. Both of Cavin's cousins (Faith and Jaxson) were terrified of Uncle Bill as babies...of course they have grown to love him now. No one understands what it is but I was determined that Cavin would warm up to Uncle Bill immediately.

We actually stayed at Uncle Bill and Aunt Teresa's house and due to schedules, Cavin didn't get to meet them the night we got in. This is probably better since he is in his best mood in the morning. So once I heard them up in the kitchen, I let Cavin loose to crawl in there. Low and behold he crawled right up to Uncle Bill, grabbed onto his legs, pulled himself up to a stand, Uncle Bill swooped him up in his arms and they've been best buds ever since!

Afterwards he met Aunt Teresa...but no one is scared of her so it wasn't too shocking that Cavin loved her as well...

And one of the 3 of them...

After that we got ready for the family gathering! Cavin got to meet his cousin Faith:

And his cousin Jaxson who is only 6 months older than him (and clearly not afraid of Uncle Bill anymore):

He met mom's other brother Uncle Donnie and challenged him to an arm wrestling contest.

And he met his great grandmother Miss Opal! 4 generations...

And then he hung out with Uncle Bill some more...

Cavin got all bundled up to help us fly the UFO. As you'll see in last year's post we get pretty into this thing! Due to strong winds it proved to be one of those unsuccessful years. HOWEVER, we are holding out hope for next year!

Although the trip was way too quick - only one full day there - we had a blast, ate tons of food, and remembered how great it feels to be around family.