Such a fun visit!

Ja, Laura, Macy, Anna, and baby Owen visited this week! We have been so excited for their arrival because I was very sad to not take Lily to Virginia to the sealing because I wanted her to see cousins. But how fortunate that the cousins are coming to us!

I had a whole list of things we could have done, but in the end the kids had a great time just hanging out together at home. They played, Ja did magic and juggled (when they left Ryan said, "I wish you could juggle cars too Mommy"), we went to story time at the library, shopping in Fort Collins, and the park.

Library story time fun!

Don't they all look like siblings? And I love their matching headbands thanks to their art project earlier that morning. 

Life size connect four was fun.

The girls named him Oliver, like their cousin. Only this Olive is bigger than their cousin they said. 

Lily talked with him for awhile and asked what he was reading. She said it was "The Pauper" (like the Prince and the Pauper). She was pretty funny in her conversation and Macy said Lily talking with the statue was her favorite part of the shopping trip. 

They all wanted to show me which mermaids they wanted. 

But the best part was when Ja helped them make a kiwi crate. The craft was to make a little pretend lemonade stand. But this got them thinking about a real lemonade stand. They made a sign, we bought cookie dough and lemonade, and stood on the sidewalk selling cookies.

The girls yelled out, "lemonade and cookies, fifty cents!" They were so excited when a car came by, "I can't believe we got our first customer!" and even more excited to see the money they raked in: $24! I woke Ryan up near the end so he could come sell too, so they each got $6. It's funny because if we were to have done that on our own without cousins, I would have felt like I needed to all all sorts of preparation. But in this case, we decided to do it and just did it. It was fun having cousins to do it with and I appreciated having Ja as another adult to sit on the grass with as our kids tried to make money.

"Our first customer!"

They loved waving to all the cars. 

Selling time is over, now they get to eat what's left. 

Laura handing out the money. 

Laura was very official as the banker. 

Jeff was able to come home one night to see them, which was fun. He came back Friday night, then had to leave again on Saturday. Friday night though he realized he booked a ticket for a red eye, rather than 11 a.m. He had to re-book another flight so was up late doing that. It was a bit stressful but luckily he got everything taken care of. The next morning I took Lily and Ryan to do service at the charter school for our ward for Colorado Cares Day. We worked in the garden pulling weeds, though the kids were more interested in the free cookies they got. But the gardner was very nice and let us eat some edible flowers, showed us some lamb's wool leaves, and other fun things that the kids enjoyed. We got back and I hurried to mow the lawn before saying goodbye to Jeff for two weeks. Lily cried and cried, but was somewhat pacified when Jeff offered to bring her back a surprise.

Sunday was the first time I have had all three kids at church. We lasted until just into the first talk, then we were out in the hall. I was out in the hall for all of Sunday School with Max (we lasted about 2 minutes in there) and then I taught Young Women's. Right when the lesson was just about over, he fell asleep on the floor. Luckily he was so tired he transferred to the car and the house easily and we all got a nap. Let's just say that I'm really looking forward to the 18-month nursery milestone!