More Southern Visitors and a Very Sad Good-Bye...

This week has been quite busy.  Mimi, Papa, David and Codi all left and in their place came Justin, Sarah and Parker Ann to see sweet little Holli.  We Face Timed several times and Parker Ann was beside herself with excitement to see her new little cousin in person...

Their plane didn't arrive until Tuesday evening late but they headed straight over to have a look at Miss Holli...

                                               Uncle Justin introduced Holli to Parker Ann.

    Look at the excitement on her face when she got to hold her little cousin for the first time!

                                                              Sweet "Kissin' Cousins"

                    She said, "I wanna hold her tight".  And Holli didn't seem to mind at all.

                                             Aunt Sarah checking her new little niece out.

                   Parker loved helping Holli with her Boppi (Parker's name for her paci...)

                                        Robby snapped this picture of me with my two girls...

                                            Holli got her first bath while Parker was visiting...

                                 OK...So, Parker insisted on "joining" Holli for her first bath!

                                        My two sweet girls in their jammies, ready for bed.

While they were here, we also took Parker Ann on a little trip to the Cleveland Aquarium.  She had a great time there...

Holli also got to go on her first and second outings...

And she is an AMAZINGLY wonderful baby!  She sleeps, eats every 3 hours and we change her diapers.  I prayed that she would be this way since we all live so far from here and Caitlin would have no help.

And then it happened; one of the days we had been dreading...It was time for Poppi to leave.  Leaving is never easy and appears to get more difficult each time we have to say good-bye.  I cannot even explain the feeling if you have never had to leave someone you love so dearly over a thousand miles behind.  When Robby began to say his good-byes to Caitlin and Holli, I could see that Caitlin was attempting to hold back the tears until we left.  They embraced for a while and then he turned to Holli, holding her close, kissing her little head and whispering in her ear that he loved her so much and hated that he wouldn't see her for a while...

 I hated to see him leave too, but knew it was time for him to get back to work.  Robby has his "special baby song" that he sings to all babies ("Hush, Little Baby"...); it calms them and puts them to sleep.  He told me that he wanted to sing it to Holli one more time before he drove off but didn't think he could do so without crying, himself.

I have one week left here and although I have already been here a month, it seems that this last week will most likely pass more quickly than the four previous ones. I plan on spending as much quality time with my daughter and grand daughter as possible...soaking it up because I know that when I get on that plane to head back south I will leave a part of me here.  No, saying good-bye will never be easy and I will never get used to it.  How in the world will we ever make it for four more years?!