Visiting for the Weekend

We were super duper excited when we heard that Grandma Kathy and Auntie Dot decided to make a weekend road trip east to see us! Of course they brought those delectable cousins along, and we all just had a wonderful, relaxing time together.  They arrived late in the night on Thursday, but Alex was up with the sun (literally) in the morning ready to play with our toys!  He didn’t stop moving the entire time he was awake all weekend!  He’s one wonderfully busy boy!  He gets so busy he forgets to watch where he’s going, which also makes him the most stumbling boy I’ve ever come across, however, amazingly, he doesn’t get too upset when he falls down (which is sometimes at the rate of three times every five minutes, at least.

Everyone took turns snuggling that sweet baby Katherine, who is incredibly laid back until she’s hungry, and then there is a food emergency!  Mr. Trouble on Feet was especially fascinated with her and had the best of time smothering her with hugs and loves and gooey kisses whenever he could.  There were a few times when we had to pry him away from her.

To be truthful, I don’t actually have ALL that many images from the weekend, because I was lazy most of the time, hanging out in my hammock, dangling under the crab apple tree having wonderful conversations with Dot and Grandma Kathy. I also managed to fit in a couple of wonderful naps, trips to a couple of my favorite places to have lunch, church, the cougar chase, a visit to the beach, and a hike up one of the best nearby trails with my sister-in-law and NO KIDS!

I planted all of my flowers and my sweet mother-in-law ran to the nursery to pick up more manure (you know you have turned into a ridiculous city person when you end up buying your manure in a plastic bag) and a couple of extra pots since somehow I ended up with more flowers than I planned.  It was so helpful not to have to stop what I was doing and load everybody up and clean up my muddy self to get the things I needed to finish the job.  While I was planting, Alex and The Banana were very busy helping me move dirt from one place to the next, and Alex, who loves to get muddy, painted my windows with a lovely mixture of mud fingerprint when he wasn’t busy driving his “kitty-bob” bobcat toy through my manure piles.  He was quite the riot (and dirt-covered mess).

We did spend an evening at the rocky beach, and I do have some fun pictures from our time scrambling over boulders and tossing rocks in the water.

Because we did not want to deal with life jackets on this particular trip to the beach, and since it wasn’t all that warm in the first place, we told the kidlets they could go in as far as their knees.  It didn’t take these two long to figure out that they could go in as far as their knees, lay down and roll in the water, which left them soaked as usual.  They were, at least, wearing swimming attire, and to their credit, they did come with the foresight to bring along extra, dry clothes for the trip back home.

Mr. Trouble on Feet planted himself on the shore of the beach and threw rocks in the water the whole time we were there.  His compatriot Alex spent the whole time on the move, of course, scrambling over every boulder there was to scramble over, jumping into the water like the big kids (but not too deep), throwing rocks from all directions and in all directions.  He even went into the water to collect rocks to bring out of the water so he could throw them back in.  The only time he stopped and stood still was when he saw a boat zip past on the water.  He watched and signed boat.

Two minutes later the waves from the boat hit the shore, and scared Mr. Trouble on Feet out of his gourd.  He was completely terrified.  Luckily YaYa came to his rescue in short order, and he crawled up in his daddy’s lap for some comfort as the waves died down.