Cousin Visit

My cousin Rachael recently moved to Austin. We went to visit them there when they first moved there in April, but today was the first time they came to visit us here in San Antonio. My sister Cynthia and her daughter Aly also came for a brief visit so they could see Rachael and her family.

Natalie got rid of her princess toys, dolls, and other young girly things a year or more ago, but she still looked around the house and our game room for things that Rachael's daughters would enjoy playing with. They found this pink foam sword that we got at Disney last month. Eric wanted to get a foam sword and ended up getting a blue one, and picked out a pink one for Natalie. Charlotte is four years old, and even though she is girly, she didn't have any qualms about playing with that sword or any of our other swords. Natalie also found some stuffed animal pandas and a unicorn that the girls enjoyed.

In the first picture, Charlotte is playing with Natalie. In this second picture, Eric takes a turn, but this time, both of them have two swords apiece. Harper, who is almost one, mostly observed.

Harper was clingy in this new place, and rarely left her mother's side. Here she is clearly tired after crawling back and forth the long hallway to our game room. Eric crawled after her for part of the time, "chasing" her down the hallway. She found a box with different sets of cards (playing cards, educational cards, etc.) and finally started "playing" with them (or trying to eat them). Before that, she was busy trying to grab her big sister's tiny Shopkins toys (in other words, Charlotte's "choke-able objects").

Charlotte had no dolls to play with, but she seemed perfectly happy playing with Eric's Star Wars figurines. She happens to be holding Kanan from Star Wars Rebels in this picture, but she also played with Eric's Darth Vader and stormtrooper figurines. I love her playful face in this photo.

Cynthia and I tried several times to get pictures of Harper, but it was too dark in there and her smiles were fleeting, and so ended up blurry in the photos. I finally caught her smiling in this picture!

You can see Eric in one of our play tents in the background. He set up our tents and tunnels in the game room for the girls to play in, then put them all away by himself when they left for home. What a big helper!

Jason spent the time downstairs watching Alex play FIFA on the PS4 and then watching the Copa Americana soccer game. Patrick grilled steaks for lunch and it was delicious as usual.

It was so nice to visit with Rachael today. We hope to have many more visits with her and her beautiful family in the future.