Cousin Fun

One of the best things about our move to Connecticut is being closer to our east coast cousins (the kids cousins, and mine!)

We are excited to be close to Gordon's sister, Heather, and her family again.  They live about and hour and a half away, which is certainly not as convenient as when we only lived 10 minutes apart in California, but amazing considering we both moved across the country within two years of each other.  We also live relatively close to my cousin, Alyson Yoder, and her family.  They live about two and a half hours away, so we have only seen them once since our move.  But, it is fun to know they are close and we can get together again.  My aunt and uncle, John and Susan, live about 7 hours away, so we haven't seen them, or their son Trevor who is living with them now, yet.  Gordon has a brother, Robert, who lives in Georgia with his family, a 15 hour drive, and we have been lucky enough to see the their whole family around Christmas time, and to have their daughter come stay with us for a few weeks this spring.

Of all of our east coast relatives, we seem to have spent the most time with Hunter.  He's come and stayed with us a few times.  Once we took him to the kids favorite restaurant, the Rainforest Cafe.

Another time we went bowling and to the Jump Zone.  We practically had the place to ourselves.  It was awesome.

The last time Hunter was here, we spent a lot of time in the car taking kids to camp etc...  but we did have fun playing and being together.  All of my kids were sad to see Hunter go, and want to know when he can come again.

We also had Alyssa come stay with us for a few weeks.  She came to work as a nanny for us and was a wonderful help to me.  Because the three big kids were still in school she spent a lot of time with Mason.  They bonded.

But we all enjoyed having her here.  She was great to go ice skating with the girls.

I wish I had docuemented more of her trip, but here is a picture of a puzzle she put together.  A few thing we learned that Alyssa loves are puzzles and Cabela's fudge!  We also learned that she is an expert pizza maker, she can be indecisive at the McDonald's drive through :), that she is incredibly sweet and loving, and that we miss her.

We loved having her here and were all sad to see her go!  We hope she comes back again.