Cousin Weekend: Relocated

Last weekend, the kids and I headed north for the fourth annual cousin weekend. Normally the cousins come down here on hunting opener, but second weekend worked better this year. In addition to changing the dates, we changed up the location. The girls were off school on Friday and Liv is busy cooking the newest member of the gang (due Christmas day) - so we volunteered to travel.

Originally Mike was going to join us, but work was really busy and he had quite a bit of homework left before the end of the term. So we decided to leave him with a quiet house (and a dog. and a short list of chores ...). That also meant that we didn't need to wait around for him to leave. The girls and I got us packed up and the house under control - then picked up Dec from school right after lunch so we could hit the road. I'm so glad we left when we did because the weather was not awesome on the way up. We had a lot of blowing snow and not great visibility. But we did have daylight. And the roads weren't slippery.

Other than my white-knuckle driving (and Fiona occasionally verifying that I was qualified to drive in such weather ... sigh ... ), we did just fine. The crew unanimously decided to watch Newsies - and got to watch all the previews before it because the DVD player remote battery was dead (luckily Grandpa fixed it for us before the return trip home). We pulled into Gma and Gpa's driveway just after 4pm - and even surprised Gpa with the homemade apply crisp we brought.

It was a low-key night and normal bedtime, which was good. Because on Saturday, we did all.the.things. Like I'm not sure there are things that you can do in Rapids that we didn't do on Saturday. Needless to say, the good night's sleep was essential!

Saturday morning, Gma made pancakes so that our bellies were ready to take on the day. Then we met the cousins and our friends Avett and Alaya at open gymnastics at 9:00. It's preschool open gym, so the equipment was a bit small for the girls. But they had a great time hanging with the littles. Fiona and Hux became quite the buddies. She was thrilled that he would let her carry him around. He was thrilled someone would carry him around ... Dec and Otto's bromance continued ... and Quinn and Milo entertained/terrified us all with their mischievous gleams and matching evil laughs.

After gymnastics, it was off to the new cupcake shop in the mall. Oddly, Gpa and Gma found time in their busy schedule to meet us there ... The cupcakes were so good, but we learned that I should have followed my instincts and got two cupcakes. Four cupcakes for four Vs was way too much. I think we each ate about half a cupcake. When I mentioned splitting them next time, nobody argued. That's a sign! With a lot of sugar hitting a lot of bloodstreams, Gma and Gpa remembered how busy they were and split - while the rest of us headed to the Children's Museum (to run off all that sugar).

The museum was a madhouse - but the kids didn't seem to mind. There was a lot of dress up, kitchen cooking, boat floating, Milo chasing, and mail delivering. The little cousins were getting tired, so shortly after noon, we packed up and headed back to Gma's for lunch. Let that soak in for a minute. We did all that - before lunch.

While a nap would not have hurt certain members of my crew, they were in pretty good spirits (could it be the pancake and cupcake sugar highs?!?!) so we dispensed with the rest time and had a game afternoon with Gma and Gpa instead. Gpa showed off his Chutes and Ladders skills and beat Quinn twice. So she schooled everyone at Memory in retaliation. Dec showed some formidable skills at a British pub game that Gma and Gpa had bought on vacation. Pro tip: don't bet against Dec when playing Shut the Box. And Fiona was a worthy challenger for me when we dusted off the old Twister game. We had the best afternoon!

I was worried we hadn't done enough, so we squeezed in a quick trip over to Auntie Tracey's to see them and meet the new kitty. Fiona was completely enamored with Luna and completely annoyed at having to share time with the kitten with her sibs. Luckily, Q and D were not that excited, so the shine of the new kitten wore off and playing some sort of wild spy game with Nate was much more interesting.

After I finally managed to extract the gang from Auntie's house, we made a quick pit stop at Gma's before heading out to Anna's house for cousin movie night. Ott and Milo were super pumped when we arrived and the gang immediately got down to the business of trashing the house. They paused long enough to eat some pizza and then got their snack cups for a viewing of Incredibles II. Quinn was pretty tired at this point, so shortly after 7 (to Fiona's lasting chagrin), I made them hug their cousins and we headed out. Fiona would like me to indignantly add "before the movie was finished."

It was the right call - because at 5am, Quinn woke me up to tell me that she needed to throw up. When she did and then fell back asleep for 2 hours, I was cautiously hopeful that it was drainage from her cold and over-doing it on Saturday. She didn't eat much breakfast and ended up throwing up again that morning - on my mom's stairs. As I was scrubbing the stairs, I could hear her happily participating in the world's wildest game of Hide and Seek with my dad. Quinn is the living embodiment of puke and rally - and we honestly don't know how we feel about that.

Armed with a bucket and a lack of clarity as to whether this was cold-related or stomach bug, we decided to forego spreading germs at church (my gang was NOT happy with me) and hit the road for home. Yet again, the only movie they could agree on was Newsies, so an encore it was. They were all such troopers. Quinn ended up throwing up during the drive, but her sibs were so kind to her - and it was in a convenient spot where I just pulled off into a parking lot, dumped her bucket, "washed" it out with snow, and handed it back to her (oh yeah - it had snowed 3 inches overnight on Saturday).

We pulled into our garage at 2pm, Quinn woke up and puked, handed her bucket to her dad, went to the table and asked for an apple, and was fine from that point on. Honestly, the puke leg of the drive was significantly less stressful than the bad weather leg [which we can file under "things I never thought I'd say"]. But no one can say that we didn't pack in the fun - and we all agree the weekend one of the best!