“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang

Our trip to the East Coast was great. We started with the Antkowiaks in North Carolina and then drove to Maryland to be with my family for a few days. Some of the best moments included:

• Getting our favorite Christmas gift from the Antkowiaks... They wrote and recorded a song for Emmaline, which you can watch here.
  
• Ashley's morning at the Spa with Jeff and Karen. Pedicure and a Prenatal Massage - it couldn't have been better!
• Flying kites on the beach
• All the seafood we could eat
• Stopping at the Grave Digger headquarters on our way up to Maryland (Bran enjoyed this a little more than I did, but it was still fun :) )
• Surprising my parents by showing up at their New Year's Eve party when we told them we wouldn't be there until New Year's day. Everyone was so excited to see us!
• Getting to spend time just being with my family. At one point Bran had gone out with his dad and it was just Mom, Dad, me, Jen and Gregg all sitting in the living room talking like we used to when we all lived at home!
  
• My mom threw the most beautiful baby shower for me on Sunday. It was wonderful, and we got so many great gifts for Emmaline! My favorite things about the shower were the theme (Ducks and Daisies - how cute!) and the gorgeous cake Valerie made for us:

As you can tell, we had a wonderful trip! Something else that made the trip so much fun was finding out how many of our Maryland friends read my blog! It seems like everyone I talked to said how much they like keeping up with us through my little updates. I can't tell you what that means to me!

I have lots of videos to sort through from the trip, and I have some new sonogram pictures to scan, so check back in the next few days for another update!