Carrie LaMarche and her 3 kids visited us this weekend

(I took a whole bunch of pictures, so will post later when I figure out what is up with my SD card reader on my computer.  It suddenly won't read my memory card for some reason.  And the USB cord that connects my camera to the computer doesn't read the pics either.)

The last three days have been a lot of things: wonderful, busy, slightly stressful, and heart-warming!  Carrie's husband Josh is out of the country for work and asked if we would be up for a visit from them.  It turned out to be a perfect weekend for them to visit.  The winter storm that hit the day or two before blew over and the roads were clear.  We were left with 15 inches of fluffy  snow to play in.  The weather was sunny and not-too-cold.  They arrived Thursday night late (10pm).  All of them slept in the basement Thursday night.  Even though Violet and Calvin both had school friday (Calvin had pajama day at OHCP), the cousins had a blast together . The favorite "in the house" toy was the legos on the dining room table.  Violet, Calvin and Austin put together a cool maze with legos on the construction lego board.

Renee came with me to pick up Violet from school on Friday afternoon.  Violet was excited to see her in the car when I picked her up.  The whole group of us went to the library at 4pm on Friday to go see the monthly puppet show (first Friday of the month).  The highlight of the puppet show was a scene with a shark trying to get a pig, and a conversation between a little boy asking his mom a ton of questions while she tries to sleep.

We made tacos for supper that night, and decided to let Austin and Renee sleep in Violet and Calvin's room.  They were pretty rambunctious but eventually settled down.  I don't think we got them all in bed until 9:45 pm.  We stayed up pretty late talking.

The next morning (Saturday) the 4 kids that slept in the same room were awake at 6:30 am.  3 of the 4 of them had their swim suits on because they knew we were planning to go swimming that day.  Not til after supper, but hey, they were excited anyway.  The plan was to go to the church and let the kids play in the gym for awhile ... while the adults attempted to get some quiet time and sit down with some yummy coffee.  That worked, sort of.  We got there later than we anticipated...more like 10 am.  The kids did play in the gym for awhile, but got bored and started tearing around other parts of the building which wasn't working all that well.  We kept them contained in the gym but they didn't seem to get getting along all that well.  Lots of "moooommm!! So-and-so is hitting so-and-so" or "moommmmm so-and-so is not letting me have such-and-such!"  We stayed long enough to talk to those who were practicing for music the next day, and grabbed Little Caesar's pizza on the way home for lunch.

After feasting on pizza, everybody had some quiet time.  Austin worked on puzzles, Renee fell asleep on the couch, and Violet and Calvin looked at books.  Eli, Vanessa and Wesley all took naps.

When quiet time was over, Dave voted to stay home with the younger sleeping ones while Carrie and I took the older 4 sledding.  It turned out to be a perfect sledding day.  No wind, warmer temps, and fluffy snow.  The kids had fun sharing sleds and trying different ways down the hill, even braving some of the previously constructed ramps that sent them flying in the air.  Ok, not flying in the air.  Just soaring a few inches off the snow. :D  Mom, don't get worried.  Violet's face did get all snowy which she pressed into my warm t-shirt under my coat to dry off.  There was another little girl at the sledding hill with her grandma that was friendly and made friends with Violet.  She got accidentally knocked over by Violet going down the hill, which she felt bad and apologized for.  The girl and her exchanged sleds a few times.  Calvin tucked himself into a little ball inside his tube sled to go over the ramps so he wouldn't fall out.  He looked like a turtle in a shell!

After about an hour and a half, everybody was tired of climbing the hills over and over.  We went home (Aal 3 littles were awake when we got back from the sledding hill) and got started with supper - we grilled BBQ chicken and heated up veggies and rice.  Feeding and clean up all took time, but it eventually got done.  We packed up swim gear and headed over to the UNI Rec center.  This event we went to we were invited to by ReMax Realty (the realtor we had help us with selling our river house and buying our current one is Gary Anderson, he sent us an invite).  This is an event we look forward to every year.  The gym is packed with blow-up bouncy things.  The pool is open.  Delicious buttery popcorn and drinks are handed out for free.  This year something new was a photo booth - where we all put on goofy dress up stuff and a photographer snapped our pic and printed out the picture for us to take home.  We decided to get a pic and it turned out SO funny and cute!  The kids played on the jumpy things in the gym for the first 20 minutes or so, then were anxious to get in the pool.  I stayed out of the water with Eli, and Carrie, Dave and the other 6 kids took to the water.  Violet and Austin took off swimming on their own and went down the big twisty yellow slide a bunch of times.   Carrie stayed with Wesley, and Dave stayed with Calvin.  Vanessa bounced between Carrie and Dave.  Everybody just seemed to have so much fun.  Calvin was proud to show off the confidence he had gained by jumping into the water where he could touch and swimming under water for a short time.  Vanessa was splashy, smiley, huggy, and happy with whoever would let her jump their arms.  She played with a purple ball.  I think she was the most excited to "go 'wimming".  Calvin even asked Dave if he would take him down the yellow slide.  They couldn't go together, but Dave told him he would go first and catch him at the bottom.  Calvin went after Dave twice and loved it.

We packed the kid's pajamas to change into after swimming.  After the effort to get get everybody out of their suits, dried off and changed, we got the popcorn/drinks and took a photo.  We sat down to eat our snacks and the comments from the kids were so fun to listen to.  Violet, Calvin, Austin and Renee all were chattering a thousand words a minute about how today was the BEST day ever and didn't stop talking about all the fun things they got to do.  Hearing how much fun they all had makes all the effort of taking all 7 of them places worth it.  Austin even told Violet he wanted to marry her and then he said he wished he was her brother so he could live at our house.  Then he thought that maybe that wouldn't be the best thing and said he might get bored at our house. haha!  Anyway...all in all...wonderful times, great cousin bonding, great memories created, and a good (but messy) time for all.

Saturday night with all 4 kids sleeping in the same room went much smoother.  We turned it into a game saying if they were all quiet they could all have 5 M&Ms in the morning.  Worked like a charm.  Silence when we left their room after putting them to bed.  I'm sure a big part of it was the fact that it was 10 pm and they had all had a very busy day and were exhausted.

Sunday they came with us to BBC and all her kids did well in Sunday School.  We had leftovers for lunch at our house and Carrie packed up and left around 2:00pm after taking a picture of all the kids together.  Vanessa and Eli took naps immediately after they left.  I gave Violet and Calvin a bath and then made them take naps.  Of course they protested saying they weren't tired.  But I let them sleep together in my bed (I even laid down with them for awhile) and about 10 minutes after laying their heads on their pillows, they were completely asleep.  I had to wake them up at 5 pm to eat something before going to Awana tonight.