fun with family

While John was away in India/Bangladesh, his mom has been here helping me. Then his sister and her family arrived on Wednesday for four days with us. John got back two days into their visit and his mom will stay with us for another 10 days. I have really appreciated the help from his mom and our visit with the Allens was so great, especially because Sam is now a 'big kid' and has two older cousins to show him the ropes. I loved watching him with them- holding their hands, taking his nap next to them on the floor of our room, playing in the sprinkler and at the indoor play area with them...

Here are the pics:

Our first dinner together with John's mom

Some Grandma/Jeff bonding time (and several of his faces)





A trip out to the night safari (but in the day) with the whole crew before John got back. We got caught in the rain and had to hang out with a leopard cat for quite awhile :-)
Ruthie- an on again off again star of this blog is now 6! I think she and Susan look alike although their hair colors are quite different :-)
When we were waiting for the rain to stop, most of us just sat on the ground, but I looked over and saw Joshua camped out on the flower bed :-)
Sam held Lyddie's hand a lot- she is 4 and liked being the "big cousin" since she is the "little sister" to Ruthie. Aren't those orange flowers amazing? They must be seasonal because they haven't been in bloom on our previous visits, but I love them and asked John to see if he could find them for our garden.
One day we went to the indoor playground and these three were so fun to watch together. I loved visits with my cousins growing up- not everyone is lucky to have cousins their age that they see often enough, but I was and I loved it. I'm glad that even though John and I only have one sister each, we have cousins close to our kids' ages on both sides!
When John got back, he resumed his role as silly Uncle John. The girls "woke" him up every morning and every nap (lyddie is the light green blur and Sam is the dark green blur).
Sam had missed John so much that for the first day or two he just wanted to be with him all the time. It was pretty sweet.

We're glad that we'll get to see them at Christmas and again in April!