St. Louis

At the end of June, the Haigler ladies (myself, my two sisters, my daughter, and my mom) mobbed the Dallas airport and flew up to St. Louis, MO to visit some relatives. My maternal grandmother (below on the left) had yet to meet Josephine (who was named after her mother), and it was high time we snapped a 4-generation photo from that side! (Insert another parenthetical phrase because three in the first paragraph isn't enough!!)And by that I mean, snapped a good three dozen photos in an attempt to get a decent one of all four of us. Josephine's fascination with being cheesy for the camera has long since been replaced by a fascination with not being cheesy for the camera. So they mostly looked like this: We also got to visit with my paternal grandmother, who had made us all personalized keychains! If you look closely you can see one in the picture below:Just kidding. You can't really. How long did you look for? :-) You'll have to take my word for it-- they were really cute.

Below is 3/4 of the Moffatt clan-- also meeting Josephine for the first time. That's my dad's sister, her husband, and eldest daughter. They also relieved the St. Louis airport of the Haigler mob, drove us back a few days later, and even let us borrow their car the whole time we were there! Thank you!!!
Back on the south side, we had the delight of meeting Josephine's great cousins. Last time I was there, Isaiah was still about a month away from being born! Here he is now, three years old with his little brother Elijah and their grandmother (my mom's cousin Donna) and Josephine with hers.
My Uncle Bob (one of my mom's brothers) put in several hours of driving in one day just to come up and see us. It was quite a treat!
The picture above and the one below are scans of prints my grandmother sent me. I really like the face Josephine's making below. On the right is John, my grandma's husband. He and Josephine had a good time smiling at each other over breakfast.

Below is a photo of Janell and Darla with my grandmother and Uncle Bob. I think this is the only picture we got of Darla, because she was a behind-the-scenes heroine during the whole trip-- taking pictures, herding us through the airports, i-phone-apping us around the city, and comforting Janell at the end through what is always a painful separation from her grandmothers. Plus, the bags we had to check were free because she travels so much for work, she was always on hand to watch Josephine if needed, and she's quite the World Cup enthusiast, which was fun. In short, Darla's awesome. :-)My mom's cousin Mary Beth (Donna's sister) also came over and later put together adorable photo books of the trip for my mom and grandmother-- the perfect keepsake.
Josephine escaping from yet another photo op...

And lastly, here's a rather telling photo of endless grandmotherly patience, even at the end of a long journey, waiting in the airport with an exhausted toddler. All told, our flight experiences were really quite good, despite being redirected to Oklahoma after a failed landing in Dallas. Josephine screamed during the ascent on the way to St. Louis because she had drainage, but really did quite well the rest of the time. It was only a moderate squirmfest.

So on whole-- a very worthwhile family vacation. It went quite smoothly, and it's just wonderful to see relatives that we don't get to visit with very frequently. Hooray for the Haigler mob! :-)