Year 2, Day 230: New Friends to Play With!

...And saying good bye to old ones.

Friday, August 18th, 2017

Friday was our last half day with Aaron, Shauna, and the girls.  Super sad face.  They flew out of Traverse City, and I guess the rules have changed about how early you have to get to the airport, even for domestic flights, from 1 hr to 1 1/2 to 2 hrs before your flight time.  I guess I haven't flown domestically for awhile.  So, they had to leave like 3 1/2 hrs before their flight time because Traverse City is 1 1/2 hrs a way.  I'm sure it is a smaller airport like Gainesville, Florida or Charlottetown, PEI, so I wasn't sure what the big deal was, but better be safe than sorry, right?  They flew to Detroit and then to New Orleans, arriving late evening.  But, it's always hard to say good bye, or see you later.  You don't know if the youngest member will remember everyone or not.  It took Abishai a few hours to get used to the ASEN crew again.  But I'm hoping that when we do see them in person next time, he'll remember.  Thankfully, we are starting up Grandpa Bible Class this next week, so the cousins will get to see each other every week via Skype.

Halfway through the day though, before Aaron and Shauna left, we were joined by Gary's older brother Ron, his wife Nina, and two of their grandchildren, Luke and Matt.  Luke is a direct relation, son of Ron and Nina's oldest son, RJ who is just a tad older than Jared.  Luke is 11.  Matt, is a step grandchild, and RJ is the stepdad.  Matt is 10.  Life gets complicated, doesn't it, when divorce and remarriage are involved.  Anyway, I write this so that when I reread it later, I don't get confused.  I'm glad that most of us have been happily married for years with no previous marriages to complicate things, but I digress.

I don't think I went anywhere that day, hooray for me!  But others went out to do this or that.  For example, Gary and Leah took ASEN to the airport and went shopping for a gift for Gary's secretary who lent us their van so we could drive up there. Ron and Nina went to the grocery store.  And some got up at stupid early time to do the following:

Aaron found this when he was researching the area and since he works for his local police department as a chaplain, it just made sense to go there!  It was about 40 minutes away, so the two brothers took their kids.  Cool!  Think about that.  The two brothers who fought and fought probably on all those road trips as kids, not only rode together for this outing, first thing in the morning, but took their kids along for the ride to make new memories with the next generation!  Sweet! Literally!

And thankfully, Jared is always good about taking a picture or two for me for the blog if I'm not there.  The doughnuts are huge!  But alas, there were no gluten free ones.  Aaron brought one back for Shauna and the kind he bought won some kind of national contest I think, but she said it wasn't that good.  On a side note, I do find that mom and pop American restaurants and bakeries aren't as good at thinking about those who have dietary issues.  And, their portions are so much bigger than Canadians' portions.  Just sayin' there's a reason why Americans are obese and other countries aren't.  I guess I'll be cheating and have a gluten filled Tim's maple cream doughnut to celebrate it's grand opening on the westside when it does actually come to town.

Aww, they look too cute in their mug shots!

Check out this doughnut they brought back for Abishai!  Humongous!  And he didn't really eat much of it either.  He's not a huge one on the sweets, just like Justin.  The boys and kids left at like 7 am this morning, and although Abishai was up soon after, we didn't think spending 80 minutes in the car was going to be much fun for the toddler.

Abishai looks like he is saying, "Yum!" and he probably is because he will vocalize with sounds or words about yummy food!

It's longer than his head!

This is what we actually had for breakfast before the kids came back from the doughnut run.  Fruit loops for Abishai, oatmeal with cinnamon for me.  I sat down and Abishai insisted on joining me.  He loves people and has been trying to keep up with everyone in this huge house and I think he just needs some Mommy time.  He's been saying, "Miss you" and giving great big hugs whenever I come home from something.  My little buddy!

Another day, another round of sitting around the coffee table.

Everly and Keturah's manicure done by Grandma yesterday.

The kids loved throwing things over the railing of the loft and then trying to throw things back up.  Thankfully, it was just paper airplanes and a small plush stuffed animal.  It still made my heart leap whenever Abishai would start to put his leg through the bars though.  I hate heights!

Wow, nice jump, honey!  All those Wednesday morning basketball meet ups at church really pay off! Lol.  Not really, but I did capture the shot!

See!  This child scares me half to death sometimes!  He's the one who will turn my hair gray!

Abishai loves playing games like the big kids, but this time, Daddy's helping him.  He just moves the pegs around.

Aaron and Shauna were cleaning up their room getting it ready for Ron and Nina when I happened to walk by and they said, "We see a skunk!"  So we ran upstairs to tell the others.

I don't think the kids have seen a wild skunk before.  The windows were open, so we had to be really quiet so we didn't scare it and make it spray.  Then we had a discussion about a local animal program called Amazon John who has an albino skunk that has been de skunked, i.e. the skunking gland have been removed.  See, we are always learning something!  And, I'm always amazed at how close in size these four are.  But I suspect, the next time or two that we meet up, Justin will be a head taller than everyone else.

Everly waiting to catch an airplane from Abishai, so we are looking down from the loft into the living room.

Another view.

And now they've switched spots!  Oh, and the moosehead's snout is made from a log! Cool!

A little screen time for the little man.  They all had much less screen time than my kids usually get at home.  Shauna is pretty good about not letting her girls watch that much TV, i.e. they don't have tablets or have a PS4 hooked up to their TV like we do.  Plus, they tend to be busier.  But I am grateful that the kids didn't even ask for screen time that much.  They have learned that when we are with other people, we don't just sit in front of the TV unless it's a movie.  And that only happened once on this trip.  Justin checked his iPod/Clash of Clans often and Benaiah was mostly glued to his device, just as much as I am.  But that's it.

Benaiah played raquetball most days and Grandpa joined him some times.  It was great getting to see these two play because I had never witnessed that before!  Grandpa usually skunks Benaiah, but Benaiah gives Grandpa a run for his money, too.  They used to do that a lot more last year when Grandpa would pick up Benaiah from school and take him to the gym.  That was before Benaiah was volunteering at church and before Jared's office was there, too.

We all know Gary is a bit competitive.  And once the kids have reached his level, he doesn't let up.  He and Shauna I should say.  Shauna is great at board games and usually wins.  I'm just glad we have a very well educated, active family that enjoys doing things like raquetball, hiking, museums, and board games together.  In fact, we all brought many games from home to share.  A family that plays together, stays together.

When Ron and Nina arrived, the kids took the boys on a big tour of the house.

Always playing games.

I didn't take this earlier, but we were showing Ron and Nina which room they were staying in, so I grabbed a quick pic.  Yes, that's a (fake) gold plated urinal!  In a house!  Crazy! 

Time for a quick workout before you are stuck on a plane going home.

Gotta do whatever Nora does.

The boys and our kids loved learning how to play pool!

Gary's oldest brother Ron, talking with nephew Jared.

Brothers! The youngest brother, Mike, and his wife Pam were going to join us, but he got out of work late and they had a midday commitment so it wasn't worth it for them to drive up here.  Ron and Nina were already up here with their grandsons visiting Macinaw City, so the house was practically on the way home for them.  They ended up staying two nights.

Eating up the last bit of blue moon ice cream after lunch!  I did have a bite of the blue moon because you can only find it in Michigan.  It's hard to describe it's flavor, but it's close to the blue part of the the "superman" multi colored ice cream.

Again, our family knows how to pose! And both sides of Jared's family know how important it is to get family photos like this and they do it as often as they can, no matter who is there or isn't there.  Another Christmas card worthy picture!  But I don't send out Christmas cards, lol.  Gary and Leah do though!

Saying our good bye's to Aaron's family.  It took another 15 minutes just to do that!

Aww, lots of love!

Shauna! We need to have this framed!  Can you tell they are related!  I keep telling people that Abishai's blue eyes and blonde hair make him look more like Aaron's girls than our family.  Awesome!  And check out his new shirt that says, "Captain Adorable!"  Justin taught him how to say, "Adorable." But then when goes to say it, Abishai goes, "No adorable.  No cute."  Bwahahaha!

I wish Jared hadn't pushed Abishai's head into Shauna, but oh well, the hug is the same.

Then the boys decided to wrestle each other.

I think Jared is trying tickle Benaiah's ear. It's easy to keep Benaiah down because he's extremely ticklish!

Jared used to do the same thing to Aaron, just sit on him so he couldn't move.

Aaron and Nora joined in the tickle fight!

A band of brothers!  AND AND AND Benaiah got the worst wedgie of his life from his Uncle!!  It looked super painful and funny all at the same time!  I'm surprised that whenever there has been wrestling over the years, no one has broken anything, even when there are tight spaces.  Yeah!

Until next time!

Finally!  Justin gets some guy time!  He loves his cousins, but there's nothing like hanging out with his own kind.  Even when all they watch together are these really stupid videos on YouTube that are only funny to tweens and teens.

We ladies love it when the men cook!  Even Uncle Ron participated and baked not one, but two cakes, one for each evening!  Awesome!

Abishai is happy 95% of the time, but he does have his moments, too.  He was upset because Daddy took away his cars because he wouldn't share them with Daddy.  The whole sharing thing needs to be worked on because he doesn't have to really share at home.  The older kids don't play with his toys.  But he does play with theirs sometimes.  We'll just have to be more intentional in teaching him this.

Ah! Finally!  A house with a water softener so soap becomes big bubbles quickly!  Yeah!  And this was the only bathtub in the whole house!  6 full baths, one half bath, and there's only 1 tub! 

I'm impressed that Abishai can lift up his toes in a slippery tub without falling and even wash them!

I think someone spray painted the fixtures white.  But, we made progress in the bath deparment!  Abishai will rinse his hair by himself under the faucet!  Yeah!

Late night swim!  It was past 9:30 when they got out!

This is Keturah who can do somersaults frontwards and backwards several times in the water without coming up for air!  Wow!

Because the girls left, and we had cleaned the sheets in that room, we decided to put Keturah in this little mini office that was part of Gary and Leah's master suite for the last two nights.  There were some lights that hung around the top edge of the walls that could be dimmed and made for a perfect nightlight!  Keturah only takes up half that couch but it kind of looks strange because the super soft blanket fits the whole thing.  She is using her big wolf stuffed animal as her pillow.  The blanket was very similar to her favorite blanket at Grandma's house.  I think we need to replace our lap blankets at home because most of them have lost any fluffiness they had.

All four of the love seats in the "boys' lounge" pull out to make single beds, so we put Luke and Matt there.  We let them put themselves to bed for the most part.  Justin finally had to go in his room with Benaiah and close the door because Matt wouldn't stop talking.  Luke was being very obedient and was very ready to sleep soon after this picture.  We didn't go up and discipline them much because we figured it was just like a regular sleepover and they will learn their lessons about staying up late makes you tired the next day.

Like father.....

.......like son!!  'Nuff said!