A few months ago I had the thought that my girls would love to plan and execute a "Cousin Camp". Knowing Jami and her kids would be here in July, we decided to do it then. The girls pinned activity ideas for weeks and were so excited! We started things out at Grandma Candy's house the night before with a giant sleepover! I don't know how much sleeping was had...but a good time was definitely had by all. (Especially by Rose, Tali, and Ace who stayed at my house and escaped the crazy.) ;)
Admittedly, while the kids were pinning ideas for weeks, Jami and I hadn't really had the chance to plan much past the 4th of July. We did our planning the evening beforehand while we ate dinner. But it turned out better that way! Because we were tired and knew we didn't have much time to get ready for this Cousin Camp we kept things simple. When left with too much time, we can make things a little more complicated than they need to be. :)
Jami brought all the kids to my house a little before lunchtime. Rose started painting faces while Jami helped the kids make some kind of fluffy, stretchy play-doh stuff. This was Jami's favorite activity...and it made my whole house smell like mango hair conditioner...which I was a fan of!
While the girls were busy with interactive activites, I don't think the boys even said hello before they were downstairs on the Xbox creating a whole new Minecraft world. But hey, they were happy Cousin Campers! Who were we to argue? :)
It didn't take long for the kids to get hungry, and the adults to need a break too. So we enjoyed some Little Caesar's Pizza and a few episodes of "Phineaus and Ferb" in the nice cool, dark basement. It was the perfect intermission to all the fun.
With the preliminaries out of the way, it was time to start the fun in earnest. Ace and I had filled up two wading pools and the slip n' slide in the backyard, and while the secondary water was obviously cloudy we just pretended we were spending the day at the lake (yuck)! :) Jami had picked up dollar store water guns for everyone, and the kids had a blast. Rose had painted as many faces as wanted painting, and once again blew us all way with her incredible skills. The kids just found whatever picture on Pinterest and Rose replicated it perfectly! Amazing...
Now, the fluffy play-doh was Jami's favorite...but I knew that tie-dying shirts was going to be my favorite! Someday I want to really legit Cousin Camp shirts. But this year the kids were going to be tie-dying large sleeping shirts. :) We had a blast. Everyone did their own shirt, with Tali and Lily (being the tie-dying experts) helped the kids to twist and band their shirts in different ways. We even did a onesie for Joey!
As we got into the evening the rest of the adult members of the clan gathered at our house for dinner. These cute kids had worked up quite the appetite and enjoyed their smothered burritos and Jami's caterpillar skewers. We ended the night with ice cream cones, some rounds of Kubb, and an evening walk for the moms. It was a perfect day, and the greatest cousin camp ever! Just wish the rest of the cousins could have been there too.
We had another afternoon of playing the next day, but the day after that it was time to say goodbye to our dearest Downs. The kids and I went up to Grandma Candy's first thing in the morning so we could bid them a proper goodbye. It's very likely that it'll be a year before we see the younger kids again. We'll be seeing Jeff, Jami, Rose, and Tali when we go to Rexburg for Megan's graduation but that was cold comfort to my kids who were going to miss their cousins like crazy. It was such a fun week together. We had played ourselves straight to exhaustion, but if we'd had a choice we'd have just kept on going. It's such a blessing to have family you love so much. :)
We're all looking forward to the time we can have ALL the cousins together for another Cousin Camp!
No comments:
Post a Comment