Cousin and Sister Weekend of Fun

Kelly & Kelson were down for a long weekend visit last weekend. I loved having them here and wish they lived closer! There's just something about family that makes even the most boring activities fun... especially when your family is my crazy sister! ;)

Kelly & Kelson arrived via plane Thursday afternoon. Belle, Corgan, and I picked them up and on the way home, we decided to stop at Super Target for some dinner and to pick up a few groceries. 3 hours later, we finally made it out of Target and finished the drive home. The busy afternoon wore out the kids (and Kelly) so they were off to bed.

All week Belle had been showing signs of having ANOTHER UTI (wetting her pants at school, screaming when you asked her to sit on the potty, and finally straining when she peed), so Friday morning I was off to take her to the doctor's office again. She did have one, so we got her medicine and got her on the road to recovery. Belle's illness got our weekend off to a slow start, but that's okay 'cause we still made the most of it. While Belle was napping Kelly and I took Corgan and Kelson to the mall, where 5 people asked if they were twins (we had a total of 7 people ask that over the weekend). Friday afternoon, we had a cousins photo-shoot with Erica at a park on the river (photos coming soon). After the photos and playground time, we were all pooped once again and out for the night.

Saturday morning, after 2+ hours of trying to get everyone read, we finally made it to the beach on our 2nd attempt (the first time we had to turn back because we forgot the beach umbrella and Kelson had an explosive poop that could not be contained by her diaper). When we were dragging the kids and all of our stuff out to the beach, I was reminded of the opening song of "Yes, Dear" (GREAT show that I'm now watching in reruns whenever I see that it's on!). We looked ridiculous, but we finally made it out there. Kelson LOVED the ocean, all of the kids loved the sand (even in their mouths, of course), and Keith loved walking all over Melbourne Beach in attempt to get us pizza and drinks only to return just in time to have us all scarf down a piece of pizza before picking up everything and heading out because we had our first rain in over a month. We did get in a couple of good hours at the beach, and the joy on Kelson's face when the waves hit her were well worth the struggle to get out there! Post-beach we took some naps, got cleaned up, then headed to Bonefish Willy's for dinner. YUM! That was some of the best food I've ever had!

Sunday morning our Cousin and Sister Weekend of Fun was already coming to an end as Kelly packed up their stuff so I could take them back to the airport already. They didn't make it out the door without a visit from Nicole though. Nicole had to come meet "Mini-Minced"! The morning of my wedding, Kelly and Nicole apparently met over a discussion about minced meat, and since that time Nicole has called Kelly "Minced", so now Kelson has inherited the name as "Mini-Minced". So cute. :)

I know I'm biased, but Kelson is really so freakin' cute! She isn't crawling yet, so she does this swimming in the air thing on her tummy. She's smart as can be with her many tricks including "So Big!" and the many signs that she's already doing. She points at everything. And she loved holding and patting Corgan's head. We had to tear Corgan and his poor head away from Kelson and Annabelle a few times because they were beating on him. Belle had so much fun playing the big girl to the two babies. And Corgan enjoyed having a playmate his own age. And did I mention that Kelson is so freakin' cute?! :)

It was great to spend time with my sister too. Even though we see each other a few times a year, there are usually lots of other people around so we don't get much one-on-one time so it was fun to do that for a whole weekend. We got time to come up with some possible itineraries for the European trip that we're planning to take together next Spring, we got to discuss our Mommy adventures and to learn from one another's parenting skills, we got to see our kids enjoying being cousins and really all interacting for the first time, and we just got to hang out. The weekend really went by way too fast!

Pictures from our way-too-short-weekend were published earlier this week on my photo gallery.