New Cousin Claire!

For Memorial Weekend we took a trip to Milwaukee to meet our new cousin/niece, Claire, and see the rest of the family, Lee, Bob, and Elsa. The trip there took about 7 hours, mainly due to heavy traffic and frequent potty requests by Carter, but we finally arrived Friday afternoon ready to relax and play.

Here is Carter in the car, trying out his new DVD player...which, as you guessed it, played the movie "Cars" non-stop. Thank goodness for headphones (or, as Carter called them "phone-heads").



We couldn't wait to see Claire in person, she was born on April 22nd and is the cutest thing! She is such a good baby, she slept and ate well while we were there and seems to be adjusting great to her new family. Mia enjoyed hanging out with another baby and we envisioned future visits where the two of them will be the best of friends and have so much fun together, just like their older siblings.


Mia and Claire relaxing on the couch together:


The whole gang...it was tricky trying to get everyone to smile and not fall over at the same time! As you can see, this wasn't Claire's favorite photo shoot.

The weather wasn't fabulous (typical Michigan / Wisconsin Memorial weekend) so after breakfast on Saturday, we took the kids to a play area in the mall instead of braving the fairly chilly/windy outdoors. They, of course, didn't care where we went - they just loved playing together.

The rest of the weekend was equally fun. We even let Carter and Elsa sleep in the same room together, Carter's first official sleep-over, and they did pretty well. We told them they had to stay in their respective beds and go to sleep, a fact Elsa repeated to Carter after we left the room (it was hilarious listening to them over the monitor when they didn't realize we could hear them). I think they were both so tired from playing, they had an easier time falling asleep.

We had a great trip and really enjoyed meeting little Claire. She is adorable and we can't wait to see everyone again sometime this summer!