With Cousins in Bismarck

Good heavens!  I’m so behind on blogging that I’ve actually been back to North Dakota and I’m still blogging from the first trip!  Yesterday Mr. TOF and I drove to North Dakota and back to drop off the big kidlets at Grandma Kathy’s house so they can go to trail ride with her and Auntie Dot and the Valley City cousins. It was a lot of driving, but my little chatterbox had a super great attitude.   I’m just going to keep plugging away at posting, though.  At some point I’ll catch up.

After leaving Valley City we headed to Bismarck to spend an afternoon with more cousins!  It was a beautiful summer day, so after arriving at Auntie Jennifer and Uncle Joey’s  house, we headed to town to check out a newly redesigned swimming pool at the park that is near the old house we used to live in when we lived in Bismarck.  The pool was wonderful, and the perfect weather made it an absolutely terrific evening.  I don’t have any pictures of all the fun at the pool because there was no one to watch my camera while I went swimming, so I didn’t bring it.  The new pool had two wonderful water slides, which The Banana and Mr. SP absolutely loved, and a climbing wall that allowed kids to climb up and out over the water before splashing down deep.  Mr. SP loved the climbing  wall.  There was also a big lap pool, where Mr. SP, The Banana and I raced from one end to the other.  I’ve never been a great swimmer, although I’ve always liked swimming, and it turns out that all of my swimming kids can pretty much beat me consistently at all but my very best strokes.  They take great delight in this.

There was also a wonderful gradual entry part of the pool, with a slide and playset, and big splashing buckets that made for a wonderfully fun time for the little ones.  It was so much fun to see them zooming around with absolute delight.

After swimming for hours, we headed back to Uncle Joey and Auntie Jennifer’s house for pizza.  Yum.  Pizza is just the perfect food after swimming, I think.

My Cousin Lisa and Ironman made appearances.  There was jumping and running, and after a few nerf gun battles,  Mr. TOF carried in his recorder from the car to serenade everyone with his original composition entitled, “Don’t Trust a Horse.”   Cousin Connor may have covered his ears at one point.

The Banana played her violin for Auntie Jennifer, which was tricky for her because we usually practice with a piano, and that changes everything.  I gave a disastrous demonstration on my cello, and then we drove to Grandma Robbie and Grandpa Ron’s farm.

Isn’t that face absolutely irresistible?  This adorable nephew looks exactly like my brother and father.  It’s amazing.   I was jealous as a kid because everyone said my brother was so cute, so squeezable, so irresistible.  But now I get to be the auntie of a super adorable kiddo, and I understand where they were all coming from.