Playing with Cousins is the BEST

When we went home in February, we hit it just right for snow.  There was snow on the ground when we got home and it snowed while we were in Des Moines.  The boys LOVED it!  We were so lucky to get to spend an afternoon at Missy and Corbin's house.  The kids had a blast playing with their cousins.  They all went out to play in the snow for a while.  The boys love playing with Cael, Avery and Gabe.  It will not be long and Luke will be playing with them all, too.

Here is my favorite niece, Avery.  She is so pretty and fun.  I love to talk with her, play games and color.  Her and I colored a picture while we visited, and she is very good at sharing/recommending colors.  I think she is getting ready to throw that snow at me. 

Corbin came home early from work to play with the kids.  He is so cool.  He put snow on the slide for the kids and they were sliding down in sleds and on snowboards!  The boys had so much fun.  In this picture Cael and Isaac decided to go down together.  They really got some speed going and ended up sliding for a long way.

Here is Cael and Ethan after a slide down the hill.  They must have crashed.  Looks like everyone is laughing, though.



Isaac going down the sled slide.

Owen and Gabe had fun, too.  Melissa had a fun idea to make colored water in squirt bottles for the kids to decorate the snow.  That was fun, too.  Gabe made all kinds of neat decorations.  Owen and Gabe played really cute together when we visited.  I have a feeling Gabe, Owen and Luke are going to be the three muscateers in a couple years.

Critters

We have had numerous critters in our house here since we moved in (almost 6 months ago!).  The most exciting (aka scarry) came on Ash Wednesday.  A medium-sized lizzard decided to venture in our house.  Here he is peeking out from behind our cooler.  Ethan was the one who found him.  He came to me with a smile on his face and said cheerfully, "Mommy, come look what is in the house."  I did think lizzard, but I was thinking 4" long lizzard not 24" long lizzard.  Ethan showed me where he was.  Luckily, he was in our storage room, and I could just shut the door and hope he would climb out of the window.  Unfortunately, Plan A (Let him Crawl out the Window) did not work.  Then I went to Plan B (Wait Until Scott Gets Home). 

Scott and I tag-teamed it. He had the pool screener and I had a broom. We had him hiding in the closet and scrambling. There were several screams from me and dirty looks from Scott as we tried to scare him out of the house. We got very lucky because he ended up falling in a box that was perfectly positioned so he could not climb out and Scott and I could remove it from the closet while putting the washboard on top to keep him in the box.  We were able to carry the box outside, set it down, kick it over and run back.  When that lizzard ran away he was FAST! 

So, here is a list of the critters we have chased out of the house so far:

1  Medium sized lizzard

2  Small birds

1 Brightly colored frog (In our upstairs bathroom)

Dozens of cockroaches (We do not chase them out, we kill them.)

Ahhh, I will never underappreciate my screened windows in the US again.