A long awaited visit

Near the beginning of Covid, my nephew and his family were planning to visit. That visit FINALLY happened two weekends ago - talk about a case of delayed gratification! And, in this case, because of the delay there was a whole additional human in the world for this visit. What a treat to get a spend a whole weekend together, and especially to have sufficient time for my great nephew to warm up to Tangly Woods and all of us who live here. It seemed like he liked it pretty well, ESPECIALLY the chickens running around!

Soon after they arrived, a few of the kids including Myles came outside with me and as soon as he caught sight of the chickens he was off! He's super steady on his feet, even on the uneven terrain and he took after those birds with a clear mission in mind (he did not successfully catch any but he did enjoy feeding them corn and even getting to pet a few of them). 

His big sister, Destiny, seemed to enjoy them too!

The weekend was full of connecting over food, savoring watching cousins enjoying each other, soaking up a few snuggles here and there and otherwise keeping up with Myles' busyness, lots of partial conversations snuck in here and there when there wasn't an immediate kid need to tend to, and a good amount of ping pong! My parents were around and got to enjoy time with them, along with Karen and Sue joining us Saturday evening for pizza, root beer floats and ping pong! Kali was very proud of getting this picture of me - I was very proud of getting any point I got when playing with Jordon! 

And at least this time I stuck with ping pong and didn't throw my back out trying to keep up with my nephew in basketball! I love how chill Jordon looks in this picture compared to Jason!

If a person was to be given the "most improved" player award it probably would have been Alida. I have a feeling my days of ping pong victories would soon be over if she had much time to practice!

Throughout the weekend we also had some lovely piano concerts!

One of the sweetest moments for me was when my nephew, Jordon, was leaving the room and Myles reached out towards him and called "Daddy" so clearly. He made his desires very clear as to who he wanted to be with. He is clearly a well-loved little guy by his Daddy and Mommy, Ashley, not to mention big sisters.  

Yes, I did take a lot of pictures of Myles and not many of all the rest of us! Restraint in taking little people photos is not my forte. 

I really hope it won't be another 4 years until we get to spend a chunk of time together again. We had gotten in a good groove with an April 2018 weekend together and a March 2019 one. With the exception of Ivy, I don't get to see many of our nieces and nephews very often so time together felt very precious. It was also fun to have another winter 2022 baby in our home and to observe the ways Luca and Myles are similar and also very different. Maybe next time we'll be able to get them together to play.