The Cousins are Coming! One if by land, two if by sea.

Okay, they aren’t exactly British.
And they weren’t coming to fight.
And they didn’t arrive anywhere near midnight.

But they did come from far away (Norway) and they certainly went over land and sea on their way here.

Oh never mind.

In other words, Tim’s brother’s wife and children flew in yesterday. On their way to see the grandparents, they stopped by our house for dinner.

See, that doesn’t sound anywhere near as intriguing and creative as a good American Revolutionary battle cry. Sigh. I’m trying here folks.

We worked hard getting the house spiffied (is that even a word) up for company. The kids were motivated and excited to work – for the first 20 minutes. After that I resorted to bribery (popsicles), cash and threats. In varying degrees. To be used as necessary.

Sarah, David and Daniel made this beautiful sign.

The house (ahem, please don’t go into my bedroom) looked wonderful by the end of the afternoon. We did dishes, put away books, carried out trash and recycling, worked through the heaping piles of laundry and just generally picked up. Rachel mopped the kitchen floor for me (and only charged $1.50). All of the children cleaned their rooms.

At no charge. Aren’t they sweet.

Rachel and Joshua were holding this sign outside when the cousins drove up. Talk about good timing!

Elizabeth admired the house and pretended that it always looks this fresh and clean. Ah, have I said before what wonderful sisters-in-law I have? She even turned a blind eye to the vacuum cleaner in the corner, still slightly smoking from excessive use (that’s what happens when you only vacuum once a month). I’m telling you, I love this woman!

After a few minutes of visiting and casual chit chat, Joshua and Timothy started right in on a game of Thurn and Taxis.

True gamers through and through!

The girls went outside to swing and talk. Rebecca is a gifted story teller and Rachel a gifted chatter (chatterer?) so I can only imagine the sweet conversation they enjoyed. Rachel and Joshua both e-mail Rebecca regularly so they easily picked up their cousin/friendship.

Rachel and Rebecca talk, share and laugh while Sarah listens.

The younger boys went upstairs to Daniel’s room. They said they were reading Magic Treehouse books to David but this is what I saw when I went to check on them.

Hmmm, this is not exactly how I read a book but then I’m boring that way. Looks a wee bit more like wrestling than reading.

We had salad and pizza for dinner. It turns out Papa John’s is different from Papa Murphy’s although they both do sell pizza. Thankfully the restaurants are relatively close by so, hypothetically speaking, if you sent your husband to Papa M’s but then proceed to order pizza from Papa J’s, it doesn’t cost him too much time driving around trying to find some pizzas ordered for “Tim.”

Hypothetically speaking.

After dinner the girls served everyone ice cream and then washed all the dishes. Thanks, Rachel and Rebecca!! The 3 Musketeers went out looking for mischief in the garage and the rest of us played a game of Puerto Rico. At one point the desperadoes came through, no doubt looking for gold.

Armed and dangerous??

The evening went by much too quickly and it was soon time for the Cousins to say goodbye. We didn’t have time to finish the game but counted up our points and named a victor. To keep Tim happy (after all he did write that great post on gaming this week), we let him win our game of Puerto Rico.

That’s not exactly true.

We want Tim to be happy – true.
He won the Puerto Rico game – true.
We let him win – false.

Well, it was almost true.

Have I mentioned recently that I really love this game? It’s my current favorite. Well, it was until Tim beat us all this evening. I’m consoling myself with the fact that the game ended early and there was still a chance I could have pulled ahead and beaten everyone. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Oops. That didn’t sound as sweet and genteel as I meant it to be. Stream of conscious blogging can be dangerous.

And I’m one of the non-competitive people in the family. Heh, heh.

Ever the humble, gracious winner.

I hope we have hours of game playing ahead of us next week. Tim will be home (no doubt brushing up on his Puerto Rico skills when he’s not working) while the children and I head off to camp. One of the fun things about the week of camp is gathering friends and family for games. Of course, with the Burts in Thailand we’ll be missing our favorite gaming friends. How can we possibly have day camp without them?? Daniel and Rachel are going to be especially sad without their ‘best friends forever’ staying right down the road. It just doesn’t seem right.

The only thing to do is play lots of games in their honor. Tina, I promise to win as much as possible. That’s the kind of friend I am.

Kathy
Project 365 – Day 193

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