Meeting More Family!

Good grief, I’ve been working on this post for nearly a month! Gerrit has kept me very occupied during that time, but I really wanted to get it published finally.

While we were in Wisconsin, we mostly saw Andrew’s family. His parents flew in from Reno, and the majority of his extended family live in the state, so it was fairly easy to see everyone. My family, on the other hand, is a little more spread out! Almost all of my extended family is in Michigan, although in the winter, I also have grandparents that head down to Florida to wait out the cold. I have one sister still in Wisconsin, but the other two and my parents live down in Tennessee now. Like I said: spread out!

We spent the most time with my sister Amanda and her family. You wouldn’t have guessed it though, because I took pretty much NO photos at their house. I blame stress and lack of sleep for this. 🙂 I finally got a photo of Amanda, Gerrit, and myself at the baby shower she threw for us:

My mom’s parents drove over for our last weekend in Wisconsin. I’m thankful they were able to come over to see their newest great-grandchild before we headed south! The weather in February in the Midwest can be pretty hard to plan around. Here they are with Gerrit:

I just laugh at Gerrit’s reaction to the camera: completely solemn! One of these days he’ll realize you SMILE for the camera, not just study it intently.

My dad’s sisters had planned on driving over to meet Gerrit (and see us) that last weekend as well, but Mother Nature had other plans and dumped snow on them. They were pretty disappointed; I was too! So Gerrit will have to wait until our next trip up north to meet his crazy great aunts. 🙂

After nearly a month in Wisconsin, it was time to head down to North Carolina so Andrew could report at our next duty station. Since the rest of my family is in Tennessee, we made Chattanooga a stop on our trip. Only my mom had met Gerrit, so I was excited for my dad and youngest two sisters to meet our little guy!

Kelsi’s little boy, Braxton, was pretty excited about meeting Gerrit! He wanted to hold him, play with him… pretty much anything that we would let him do with to Gerrit.

Aren’t they cute together?! Since meeting Gerrit, Braxton has become a big brother, and from what I hear he is loving it! I can’t wait until Gerrit and his new cousin, Nolan, are big enough to play together.

My sister Becki has said she won’t hold babies until they have some head control… so I’m glad Gerrit was almost 4 months old when she got to meet him. I wish we had had more time in Chattanooga for her to take some photos of him, because she has recently graduated with a degree in photography. Hopefully next time!

Last but not least, Gerrit had to meet my dad… his Papa! Gerrit’s middle name (Allen) is after my dad’s middle name. Since my dad didn’t get to pass on his last name to any boys, I wanted our first son to have part of his name.

I realize Gerrit doesn’t look thrilled to meet any of his family, haha, but he was much more interested in person! Like I’ve said, he is a pretty serious little guy. He really likes to observe people for awhile before he starts smiling and interacting with them. Slow to warm up to people, just like his momma. I’m hoping that the next time he sees everyone, he will get to play with them more and start to get to know them. I know he will love his crazy family!