A visit from the cousins

For the past 2 weeks, my niece and nephew have been staying with us.  My niece, Oceon, is 12 and my nephew, Shamus, is 10.  For the most part all the kids gets along.  However, I think that 2 weeks is just a tad too long to spend together.  Oceon and Aislinn are the same age, so that's great.  Maeve is only 4, so she gets on Aislinn's nerves.  Oceon doesn't have a little sister who annoys her to no end, so according to Maeve, she is much more fun to be around.  The girls mostly got along well.  Until 2 days ago, when Aislinn kicked Oceon out of her room, and Oceon was telling Aislinn she was never coming back.  Oh my God, the drama!   Shamus is one year younger than Aidan, and a little over 2 years older than Declan.  Three boys is NOT a good number.  Especially when the youngest wants to do everything the cousin does.  Mostly because they don't see each other except for once or twice a year.  However, the cousin wants to hang out with my oldest son and do everything he does.  It's hard being the littlest and left out of everything.  Especially when the littlest is being told by idolized cousin that his "real parents didn't want him, and left him with us."  WTH?!?  Nice.  For the record, my son is not adopted.  And even if he was, that's not a nice thing to say to a child.  Did my oldest son stick up for his younger brother?  Why no, he didn't.  We are having issues with that right now.

Anyhow, things were not always like this.  Last Saturday we took all the kids to the Montgomery Zoo. 

It's so hard to get 6 kids to look at the camera at the same time, but I think it came out pretty good.  The zoo was great!  Except for the white tigers.  One of them was walking around with a small duck in it's mouth.  I thought it was dead at first, but was sadly mistaken.  When the tiger put him down and proceeded to give the duck a bath, it didn't move at all.  Then the tiger got up and walked away.  The duck seized the moment and started to run away, only to have the tiger turn and pounce on it!  There might have been some screaming from the people, OK me, watching.  At that point, I ran away.  I didn't want to see any more.  My food is born already packaged in the grocery store, thankyouverymuch.  However, when the kids finally caught up to me at the exit, I got to hear all the gory details of how the tiger held his paw on the duck's head while it ripped out all the feathers and then as the tiger got up again, the poor duck was on it's back.  Twitching.  I will never understand why that was interesting to watch, but Aislinn took a VIDEO of the whole thing!  My skin is still crawling.  

Anyhow, onto happier thoughts.  We had a nice time with the kids going to the movies, going out to lunch, playing family kickball, swimming, swimming and more swimming.  And making s'mores!!  Even though they are on the grill and not over a campfire, they still tasted good. 

That's it for tonight!  See you tomorrow.