The Brothers David and Brian and Fams Come For a Visit

Brother 1 = David; Brother 2 = Brian; wish so much that Brother 3 (= Mark) could've been with us, too

 This week we had some fun visitors.  My brother, Brian, and his wife, Marissa, and their girls, Reed and Tillie, came to visit us on Sunday night/Monday morning (they got in from Seattle at 2 am).  Then my brother, David, and his wife, Diane, and their kids, Eli, Adam, Mary Alice, and Jakob came on Tuesday night.  Dave and his family just moved from Australia last week and are traveling around visiting family for a few weeks before settling in Texas.  It was super awesome that we could meet up here for a few days.

The men and kids went kayaking on Wednesday, and us women and little babes met up with them a little way into their trip with lunch.

l to r: Jiles, Weston, Dave, Jakob, Diane, Brian with Tillie, Reed, Marissa

Reedy Reedy Reedster (as Brian calls her)

Adam, Eli, Spencer, silly-face Ezra

Kate and Mary Alice - 4 months apart:

Back to the boats:

Reed went the first 40 minutes, then was done.  So Jiles took her jacket and went the rest of the 2 1/2 hours. 

Spencer got the single.  He loved it.

Kate with Uncle B.

After they were out of sight, us women and babes played in the sand and water for a bit.

Big-blue-eyed Jakob.

Sandy Reed.

Woohooo splashster Zoe.

Marissa and Tillie.

The 3 littlest, Jakob, Zoe and Tillie.  Jakob is 2 months older than Tillie, but the same size as Zoe, who is 11 months older than him.  That boy is super duper busy (and I know busy).

 Back at the ranch... the girls had fun with static-y hair, and playing "shock monster".

 Weston organized a little service project: some work in the orchard.

Digging around the trees and mulching.  Look, I even got in there for about 5 minutes (long enough for Diane to take this picture anyway).  My belly kept getting in the way, though.

 Girls on the swing:

 David is training for a 100 mile mountain bike race in Colorado.  He biked every morning up the mountain. 

Yesterday he went up and back 5 times.  It's 5 miles straight up the mountain.  He did 50 miles total in about 6 hours.  He has kind of a disadvantage since he moved from Perth, which is on the west coast of Australia, at about 60 feet above sea level.  He has to ride in Colorado next Saturday which is like, what, a mile high?

He crashed and took a nap on the lawn later.  Jiles and Zoe tried to do the same thing, but had way too much energy.

BBQ...

Brian, running man, is training for a marathon and got up early every morning to go running.

Between he and David I felt like sort of a slacker.  hahaha.

It was fun hanging out with everyone.

Diaper twins...

Down to the creek...

That was fun until we saw a rattlesnake in the bushes, which got away.  That wasn't cool.

Motorcycles was a big thing.  I think that there was an engine running almost the whole time.  Adam and Ezra and Kate were the main ones riding.

We played games, ate banana splits, the kids watched Hoodwinked, and read lots of The Far Side comics, jumped, zip-lined, played with the dollhouse, painted rocks, swung on the swings.  I just loved being together and talking with my brothers and sisters-in-law.

Before they all left yesterday we lined the cousins up in age order, with popsicles, for a picture.  Jakob was asleep, but he would've gone between Zoe and Tillie.

They are all down at my sister's house now, about an hour and a half away.  She was in Poland visiting our parents with another sister for the last week.  She got back home on Thursday night.  They're partying it up down there now.

 Good times, great family!