The Cousins

Ah, one complete, glorious, school free, week with the cousins has come and gone. Spring Break was truly lovely, although Sweet Boy #1 insisted on doing two lessons of phonics so that he could earn his two remaining stars and gather up his much anticipated prize of an….alarm clock!

But other than that it was: wake-up, eat, rush to cousins where they slumbered at Grammy’s house and play, or listen to the thump thump thump of cousins rampaging up the stairs and rush to the gate to let them in and play, eat lunch, meet cousins outside for snow and mud and puddles, and wildly waving sticks and branches in every direction that somehow managed not to make contact with any eyeballs, drag into Grammies to strip out of muddy clothes and play near the fire and get warmed up just enough to start running in mad circles screaming and accidentally breaking the handles off coffee mugs and spilling juice and eating out of Grammy’s candy dish, then slow down for some cartoons, then outside once more for several minutes of all 6 kids running running running around the porch screaming or riding around in the wood cart, or building a personal cannon on the porch with some big sticks and an old box, then finally drag them kicking and screaming off to bed where all would collapse in epic fatigue only to burst forth the next morning to do it again.

The last full day we hiked down to a small creek that creates a small waterfall in the spring and Sweet Boy #1 waded past the crust of ice and snow, into the creek up to his thighs, Sweet Boy #3 waded up to his knees several times before the crying began, but Sweet Boy #2 plunged in almost completely several times until I had to strip him and make him sit in his soaked undies in the sunshine on a hillside eating a granola bar. The cousins were equally soggy and the moms exhausted and sore due to carrying various small children on portions of the walk. Still they were Glorious times all around.