Having Fun with Cousins in Arizona

The best part about the whole trip was seeing my girls play with their cousins and get along so well. I was nervous that Shasta wouldn't open up to them because she never sees them, but seeing them play together it was like they have never been apart. Shasta was like a little mom to all the kids. She's definitely the bossy, older sister type! And she would always come tell me when someone was doing something they shouldn't.

I was surprised how well all these terrible two and three year olds got along. Don't get me wrong, they had their share of fighting, but for the most part they played together really well. They were being so cute playing ring-around-the-rosie that I snapped some pictures and decided to take a video on my phone. But of course as soon as I started recording they all started fighting. Figures!

Tucker and Addi are in front, Shasta and Ian are in back, and Shane and Carter are on the right.

They spent a lot of time on the trampoline together. 

Then one morning Shasta decided to exercise with Sally. It was adorable watching her try to do all the poses. I was trying to be discrete in my picture taking because I was worried she would stop once she saw the camera, that's why I'm mostly behind her. But once I moved into a better place she didn't care that I was taking pictures of her. She was just having fun exercising. Then later some of the other kids joined in. (Sally may not appreciate these pictures, but I think they're super fun!)

One day we had a water balloon fight... which was really more like throw all the water balloons on the ground as quickly as possible. We filled up 100 water balloons while the kids were napping and I'm pretty sure they were all popped 10 minutes into playing with them. Once there were about 5 balloons left we tried to play a game of passing the balloons in a circle, but they didn't get it. Or at least, they didn't want to get it. One child would pass it and the next would intentionally drop it. So we would try again, starting it with a different child. Same story. The last balloon made it all the way around the circle and the last child to get it threw it to the ground. Game over! Then we assigned each child a color and they had to pick up all the broken pieces of that color. Papa would never stand for his lawn to be covered in broken balloons!

Side note: Filling up the water balloons was a very painful process. I had to use the hose outside and I did it at about 2 in the afternoon so as you can imagine, the water was pretty much burning lava hot. The first time I attempted to fill a balloon I thought I had stuck my hand in a pot of boiling water. It took FOREVER for the water to even be bearable to touch and it NEVER cooled down to a refreshing temperature. I'm surprised I didn't get blisters from it! Once they were all filled we put them into two buckets and put ice water in with them to cool them off so they would be fun to play with.

One night we used chalk on the driveway. I don't recall one time in my childhood that we were EVER allowed to use chalk on the driveway. I'm telling you, my dad has gone soft! Even though Shasta and I have used chalk on the sidewalk pretty much a gazillion times, I still felt nervous when I promised my dad that the chalk would wash right off and won't do any harm to the drive. Gulp. Fingers crossed this chalk works the same as ours at home!

Then when coloring with chalk got boring they decided to jump off the curbing into the yard. Over. And over. And of course when standing at the edge and jumping got old they decided to get a running start.

We did other fun things like decorate paper with stickers, played with trains, megabloks, puzzles, tunnels, soft blocks, and so on. And Sally and Jake took the kids on a walk almost every night. I went with them a few times, but my goodness it was SO hot and I'm not used to the heat the way they are. I had to shower every night before going to bed or I couldn't sleep because I felt caked in my own sweat and filth by the end of the day! It's amazing how much we adjust to the climates we live in. Most of the fun things we did was in the evening when the sun was so blazing hot. Even when we went swimming we did it after dinner so the kids didn't bake. During the day we stayed inside for the most part. Occasionally the kids would play outside while they waited for dinner to be ready, but not very often. And no matter what time of day they played outside, Sally was always good to make sure all the kids had plenty of water to drink. Even going on walks after dinner, all the kids took sippy cups with them. My family lives in one extreme climate and I live in the other. They take care of us when we visit in the Summer so we don't die of heat stroke and I'll take care of them when they visit in the Winter so they don't freeze to death! We make a good team!