Fun times with Cousins

The kids had a great time at Mimi and Papa's last week. Two movies, laser tag, indoor rock wall climbing, waterpark and many evenings out on the boat, swimming and tubing. Mark Thomas and Macie had a little adventure on the tube that led to MT getting a small black eye and Papa having to buy a new liner for the tube. Max now realizes the fun of having Papa go a little crazy while driving and had fun "falling out" of the tube. And the three little girls are just too funny with each other. We affectionately call them "Triple Trouble" and they usually live up to it. All the kids are so close in age and it's just so much fun to see them interacting with each other. I'm so thankful that we see them more often now that we're in TX. It's a very special relationship and they're all very connected. Max and Carson were even swapping school stories and when Heather and I would ask them a question they would give each other glances trying to determine how much information they wanted to divulge. A little scary for Heather and I but we're glad they feel close enough to chat about that "stuff".

Mark ended up coming along too for the water park day. I had planned to drive up by myself to get them and return on Sunday but when Ben found out that Mark wasn't coming he started to spread a little smack and when Mark found out about it he decided to surprise him. So he called Ben from the car trip up and was telling Ben how much he wished he could be there and Ben was not happy at all. I called them a little later and again Ben was saying how much he wanted to go down the slides with Mark and I played dumb, not hard these days with all that's been going on this summer with 4 crazy kids at home. So when I pulled into my parent's driveway, I went in the back door as usual and was greeted by all the kids, very affectionately I might add, since they hadn't seen me in 5 days and then the front door bell rang and the kids ran to open it. Don't quite know why they always act as if they've never heard that sound before or had visitors but it's always a fight to see who will get there first. So when they opened the door and saw Mark it was rather priceless. Mark said, "I heard someone here was trash talking on my good name" and Ben just got this huge smile on his face. It was a fun week of family time and many more memories were made.