Cousins!

We managed to get R and RUS together with their cousins for four days after Christmas this year. We met up with my parents, three of my four brothers, and two of my three sisters-in-law in Louisiana at A and M's house and had an absolute blast, staying through New Year's Eve. It was really really nice to connect, and to have some extended time for the cousins to get to know one another and play and have fun. And of course, seeing my parents, my brothers and my sisters-in-law is always good for my soul.

I sent ahead of our arrival two big boxes of baked goods and my mom brought along all the things I didn't make, and my dad and brother made batch after batch of Christmas tea punch and we just had a grand old time.

G and R had the best time together. They were like peas in a pod, really, and R had so much fun exploring all the boy toys that G has that we don't have as much of at our house. No princesses, but lots of dinosaurs, cars, trains, and trucks!

Here they are right before the family Christmas exchange dying to open presents--they were seriously trying to make little tears in the wrapping paper to see what the presents were! J and I had to stand guard to be sure they didn't actually go ahead and unwrap them!
Here's Little T eyeing the presents!!
The day after the Christmas exchange was G's birthday, so we had a party for him (and for A, whose birthday is the first week of January). M made an amazing cake that R and G could hardly wait to get their hands on. Here they are, with J sitting guard making sure they didn't dip their fingers into that frosting before the cake was cut!
And here's a close-up of the cake. It was awesome.
One of G's birthday gifts was this T-ball set (which Grammie and Grampie also gave to R). The kids had a blast with it, and we're already looking forward to breaking it out this spring with R and RUS!
Trucker and RUS are 8 months apart, and really didn't play that much together since they are at totally different developmental stages, but it was funny to see them staring at one another. There were several episodes where they just stood and looked at one another. RUS liked pulling Trucker's pacifier out, and Trucker would purposefully stand right in front of RUS waiting for him to pull it out.
I was really really impressed with how well Little T played with the trains. He loves them! And he's really good at getting them set up and running the trains around the tracks. While digging through the different trains I found a set of letter trains that spelled G's name, but I couldn't find all the different letters. Little T found them, too and lined them up in this picture.
And here's a shot of all the cousins--I wasn't brave enough to try and wrangle all the kids together except when they gathered to watch an episode of Thomas one evening. Aren't they just precious? It was really, really wonderful to see them all together--we're already trying to figure out plans for this year's Christmas!