Summer days with the cousins

Vicky and her kids came up for a few day visit.  Hailey adores Adessa and Matthew and Jexten are "brothers.  even when we fight sometimes, that's ok, we're still brothers." says matthew.  In fact we were asked today if they were twins!  haha  Matching buzz cuts and red sweaters can do that I guess, but the similarities end there.  They get along PERFECTLY though.  In fact I teared up a little the other night thinking about what a tender mercy Jexten is in Matthew's life.  Jexten is.....loud :)  In the nicest way possible.  and you all know Matthew's hearing issues.  But their conversations go on and on and on and they match each other's high vocabulary level so they stay on the same page.  They played everything from spy kitties to Aliens eating "space radishes" (cheese balls).

We were able to do a lot of really fun activities with them.  We will miss them a lot when they go home Saturday!

 Curt and I are just big kids.  Who doesn't love cotton candy?  You're weird if you don't.

 This is where Matthew and Jexten took most of their meals.

 We got dinner and a show one night!

 And then we slept out in tents.  Ok, Hailey and I slept in the trailer and Grandpa and Grandma had a peaceful quiet night inside the house.  But Vicky toughed it out with Adessa, and Curt slept in the boys' tent to make sure they went to sleep eventually.  Actually I think everyone was exhausted by the time we climbed in our beds and it didn't take long for them to go to sleep.

 We set hailey up a spot and she played in there with Adessa until I was able to convince her that sleeping in the trailer was a good idea.

 And we finally got them out to the duck pond with bread so they could feed the ducks.  The usual huge crowd of duckies wasn't there for some reason, so it was actually pleasant to feed them without them trying to eat your hand too.  Oh, actually I think we were mostly just missing the geese.  That was the difference.  They get ferocious!

 While feeding the ducks Hailey had this little guy sneaking up trying to snatch the crumbs she was dropping right at her feet!