Sunday, July 8, 2012

Hanging Out with the Cousins Part 1

For two weeks between Father's Day and July 4th, Linda, Ethan and Benton came out to KC for a long visit. We missed their first weekend in town/down at Clinton as we were at the Lake for Father's Day, but we did manage to meet up at one of our favorite pizza places, Pizza West, for dinner. They have a good, relatively cheap pizza buffet 3 nights a week, and the buffet is actually set up in their back room, which is totally geared toward kids - chalkboard walls, arcade games, a train table, and they even have a large scale train running about 8 feet above the floor, around the perimeter of the room.

Needless to say, the boys were well entertained, ate a decent meal and had a good re-introduction to each other, since they hadn't been together since Thanksgiving.

Tuesday night Jill and Gary took everyone to T-Rex, a great themed restaurant out at the Legends, complete with anamatronic dinosaurs, big and small, that move and roar. Joseph got a little freaked out, but managed to have fun playing with the new dino toys Nana bought while we were waiting for our food.

After dinner, she took Ethan and Joseph to their version of Build-A-Bear/Dino, where she let each of the boys pick a dino to make. They each had a lot of fun helping to pick a heart, stuff and fluff the dinos, and then name them.








Wednesday Linda brought the boys to our house to play for the day. Joe and I managed to get away for a bit to have the ultrasound we posted about a while ago, while Linda stayed at the house and watched the boys. Joseph and Ethan had a blast playing inside and out, especially with Joseph's train table. By this time, Joseph and Ethan were really getting comfortable with each other, and settled into their respective roles for the rest of the trip - Ethan in charge, and Joseph copying just about everything Ethan would do/say.
We decided that since the plans were to go to the Tonganoxie pool on Thursday, that Joseph and I would head out there after breakfast in the morning and spend the day in Tonganoxie. Linda found the VFW park and a neighboring playground, where we spent a good portion of the morning playing.
Ethan wanted to check out the tank; Joseph wasn't really sure what he was supposed to be doing...

 So he just wandered behind Ethan, taking it all in.


In the next field over, there was an old helicopter perched high in the air. Joseph is much more into helicopters, and wanted to get close to check it out. There wasn't too much to see or do around it, though, so the boys decided to run back to us so we could head to the playground.


For whatever reason (probably because Joseph knows he has to hold someone's hand while he's near a road) Joseph grabbed Ethan's hand and told him to hang on. They were so cute walking side by side, holding hands.


They managed to stay this way until one of them had the idea to run, and they didn't let go of each other's hands. Lots of giggles ensued, until Joseph tripped and wiped out.


If you enlarge this picture, you can see how much fun these two were having running together!


Once we made it over to the playground, the boys had lots of fun chasing each other around and around. For the most part, Joseph just wanted to run after Ethan, who was happy to be chased. It took a bit of convincing to get them to stop for a lunch break.


After lunch they continued to play together until it was time to head back to Nana and Papa's for naps.




After naptime, we headed over to the swimming pool, where they have a great zero-entry toddler pool. While Ethan practiced his swimming, Joseph wasn't sure what to do with himself as we wanted to go to the deeper pool, but didn't actually want to be in the pool. So we hung out at the toddler pool where he made friends with a few little girls.


And then was perplexed when they decided to stop playing with him. Joe and Jill both came up to the pool after work, where we hung out for a bit longer before heading back to the house for a quick dinner.




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