ahhh, Family!

It's been a wonderful day. I absolutely love it when children play nicely and there are few fights. It also helps that there was much less work to do today than anticipated. The boys napped, ate, played, and watched a little bit of TV as a treat. When Poppa arrived, there was so nuch excitement that you'd think that Santa and the Easter Bunny made a personal appearance just for them!

Then, when some cousins came a couple of hours later, they practically ran out the door before the van was parked! Yay! Relatives to play with! But it really is wonderful to see how differently the kids play with relatives compared to the ones that come in nearly everyday. Things aren't conflict free, but they do seem to take on a different tone. Plus, if there was any fear that they would make strange with the adults, they were groundless. When I got jammies on Boy2, he ran right to Poppa and snuggled in. I really thought he was going to go to sleep, but he didn't. There was too much else going on. And watching the five year old cousin sit on the Boy's bed and "read" him a story before bed was wonderful to watch, too.

Tomorrow we'll be up early to breakast and load up the cousins' van so they can continue on their trip (what a nice way to cross most of the country! The train!) Then we'll spend a nice family day with Poppa before the ceremonies and services of the actual graduation. There's a whole list of things that the Boy wants to do that won't likely get done (I don't think the weather is too conducive to fishing or flying kites), but we will be making some wonderful memories.

I really do love being around family, if only to give the kids a taste of what it's like. I can remember living farther away from relatives and only really seeing them twice a year or so. Poppa was telling us about his growing up where there was alot of extended family all in the same neighbourhood. I don't really think that my kids will ever really have quite that close a familiarity with their extended family, but I would like them to have it as more than twice a year. Well, we'll see how the summer and fall go...