Visiting Cousins

A couple of weeks ago Joshua and Minna's one and only cousin Jacob came to visit along with Brian's sisters Sarah (Jacob's mom) and Mackenzie.
Joshua was super excited, especially when I told him that Jacob would be here in time for dinner. When they got here Joshua and Jacob starting playing almost immediately The first couple of nights Jacob slept in Joshua's room. During that time they started getting along less and less well. A couple of days later they were fighting quite a bit and Joshua would just scream when Jacob came to bed. So Sarah moved Jacob in with her and then the kids started getting along much better. I guess they couldn't be together 24/7. By the end of the trip they could sit together without a fight. And Joshua and Jacob played together (not just side by side) voluntarily, and their game involved taking turns and sharing. I was quite impressed.
They did manage to get into some trouble together too. One evening we were eating dinner and the two year olds had hung around as much as they were going to and had gone off to play. It had been a while and we hadn't heard them at all. Quiet from them could only mean trouble. Sarah and I went looking for them and found them in the bathroom flushing a ton of toilet paper down the toilet and giggling. This was still when they were just starting to get along again, but I guess they could as long as they were getting into trouble.
They were fortunate enough to come in the most wonderful time of year up here, so we got to do lots of fall stuff.
We went apple picking.The boys had fun grabbing apples off the trees and eating them. It was a beautiful day and Sarah and Mackenzie were loving the beautiful orchard and scenery.

The next day we went to the library for singing time. I picked out Aristocats and Dragon Tales to check out for the boys. Each wanted to hold a movie on the way home and fortunately they wanted to hold different ones. Unfortunately they each wanted to watch the movie that they were holding and had a spat over it. Fortunately it didn't matter which movie I put on they didn't care once it got started.

Wednesday we took Sarah and Jacob to play group. It was our first field trip and we went to the Ellms Family Farm. It was really fun and there was a ton to do. They had a corn sand box that Joshua took a tractor from and pushed around in the surrounding dirt.They had giant tricycles that Joshua tried to ride.

One of Joshua and Jacobs' favorite things was the slide made out of a pipe. At the end they got to go down a giant pipe slide. They thought that was really really fun.

Then they got to jump on a giant jumping pillow thing.

Then we went through a corn maze. It was a kiddy corn maze so it was mostly just a walk through the corn. The boys went in separate groups here, so Joshua went through with Rowyn.

Next came Joshua's favorite part. They rode in a trailer behind a tractor around the farm.

Then they got to pick out a pumpkin to take home Thursday we just had a quiet day at home with the kids, but after Minna went to bed Brian and I left the kids with Sarah and got to go on a date. So wonderful

The last day they were here we thought we would take the kids to the mall to play in the play area. We got all the kids in the car and then Brian's car wouldn't start. We tried to jump it for a while, but it wasn't working. Sarah suggested that we try to push the car to see if Brian could get into first gear and then start it from there. So Sarah and I pushed the car while Brian tried to start it. We thought it was funny that the guy was in the car while the girls pushed. It didn't work and we got stuck at the bottom of a little hill. We tried jumping it again, and finally got it going.
The boys had a lot of fun and before we went home we even managed to scrounge up 3 quarters to let them ride in one of the cars.

We had lots of fun having them visit and Joshua still talks about Jacob.