Hanging out with the cousins (well, some of them)

My sister Kelli came into town from Toledo last Sunday. She was leaving for Utah out of Cleveland and came a few days early to hang out. Let me tell you how chaotic my house is with 4 kids all three years old and under, as well as 3 adults. I attempted to clean my house before she came, but then realized that within 10 minutes it would be a disaster again so I gave up cleaning before I even really started. And my brother comes with his girlfriend in a few days, so I've kind of put off cleaning still, even though Kelli left 3 days ago. Anyway, just don't come to my house in the next few days so you can't see how messy I've become!

We had a lot of fun with Kelli and her boys, Hayden and Roman. Hayden and Olivia are only 2 months apart and get along okay, although they know how to push each other's buttons and fight as much as they get along. Jack thinks Roman is a toy and liked to climb on him and wrestle with him, although Roman didn't like it at all. Roman just liked to steal Jack's binkys and Jack didn't like that at all either. You can imagine how many fights we had to break up.

The kids obviously needed to get out of the house (and not to Target, like we had done the day before), so we packed a picnic and went to the park. The kids had a blast, didn't eat any of their lunch, and got some fresh air. And (drum roll please) they got along! Maybe a small apartment and 4 kids and 3 adults don't do good things for kids' moods. Kelli gets back on May 7 and then we are going for the weekend to Toledo (IKEA in Detroit, here I come!).

Hayden giving me a big cheesy grin. Olivia actually stopped long enough to smile for me. She loves going to the park and I can bribe her to do pretty much anything as long as she gets to go play at the park.
Roman's cute little smile. He liked the big huge pile of wood chips more than the slides. Actually, all the kids liked that pile of wood chips (they really needed to just spread them around, Jack practically somersaulted down the pile at least three times).

Here is Olivia trying to teach Jack how to jump down the pile. Every time I saw Jack he had more wood chips on him- in his diaper, his shoe, his nose...

Jack looks hotter than he actually was (although he downed his own apple juice box and then proceeded to attack the other kids' juice boxes). I put sunscreen in his hair because his poor little scalp would have burned. The kid got his mother's skin tone (sorry babe!).