Weekend with Family

We made a three hour trek north to spend this past weekend with Doug's brother Jon and his family.  We used to spend more time with them when the kids were younger because they would drive down to visit us and the rest of Doug's side of the family.  However, now that all of our kids are older it has become a scheduling conflict.  Funny, you would think that it would be easier to make the drive with older kids, but the opposite is actually the case.  Now that they're older there are school days and when school is out there are sports schedules.  Between our two families the older kids were involved in swim team, baseball, soccer and basketball over this past summer.  That doesn't take into account Boy Scout camp and Church camp either.  Finally we figured out that if we wanted to go visit them that last weekend was pretty much the only weekend we had free before their kids started school and we started another soccer season.

We really wished we lived closer together because the cousins are all close in age and get along so well.  This visit was no different...

We hadn't been in the door two minutes when we decided to head to the local waterpark.

Enjoying the warm weather

Practicing swimming without a lifevest

Game Boy getting a ride from Dad

The weather was cooperating with us, it was actually warm enough to swim and the rain they were predicting never showed up.  I took the little ones around the lazy river and Doug took them down the slide (you can tell which one is the "fun" parent in our household)!  I wished I had the camera to get a shot of Toddler Boy's face on that ride.  He was a bit freaked out but wanted to go down it again, so I guess he liked it.  Princess refused to go with Dad on the slide, it looked to be a bit too fast for her taste.  She enjoyed the big bucket dumping water in the kids play area and she did go down the slide in the baby pool.

After swimming Uncle Jon mentioned they had a new Bass Pro Shop open since we last came to town.  The older kids were all over that...

This was the best group shot I could get
It's like herding squirrels!

They had a huge aquarium with BIG fish...

and big grizzly bears!

The kids also had fun working their mad shooting skills.

Game Boy and cousin playing Buck Hunter

My niece getting in some target practice

Quality male bonding/shopping time
He scored some caramel corn too!

The younger kids got in on the action

The little girls found some horsies
(brother bombing photo with "hand in pants" shot)

Of course, he wanted a pink horse too!

The kids were disappointed we didn't buy the horses, but we made it up to them by stopping to see the fish outside the store.

The next day Jon and Doug took the older kids fishing and out to play a game of baseball.  Amazingly, there were no major injuries to report.  I sent the camera with them but they only came back with one shot...

Fishing spot

I take it they didn't catch anything big or they would have snapped a picture, but the lake was nice.

While they were at the house the kids had fun playing nerf wars and bouncing on the trampoline.

No injuries to report here either...

While the big kids were doing all their activites, I hung out with my awesome sis-in-law Nicole and watched Toddler Boy play with their dog Max.  They had a great game of tug of war going...

Max won, pretty much every time.  But Toddler Boy loved every minute of it.  While they did that and the little girls played together I got to visit with Nicole and pretty much did this...

Me and my cup of coffee

A great trip, thanks to Jon and Nic for hosting us.  Now we get to host them when they come down to visit tomorrow.  Weather permitting, we'll head to the zoo or hang out at the pool.  Another post and more pics to follow!!

Trip home...travelling with little ones has it's perks!