Temporary family of five

This weekend we added one to our numbers and became a family of five...for 3 days. :-) Our nephew, Nicholas, stayed with us Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We were supposed to have our other nephew, Nolan, as well, but he came down with a fever, so he stayed with his grandparents. We missed him, but had a great time with Nick! On Friday,after no one took a nap, I loaded all 3 kids up on the golf cart and drove to a near-by gas station for slushies. Each kid knew exactly what flavor they wanted, and each one chose a different flavor. It was precious! That night, we had pizza for dinner and the kids started some weird pizza chant, which then continued to occur every time we sat down for a meal the rest of the weekend. It went something like this, "PIZZA PIZZA OUWW!" I have no idea how it started or what it means, but I am glad it is finally fading out of our meal time tradition. I am hoping it does not pick back up again the next time we all see each other. The three of them together is just so funny because they all mimic each other at some time or another and they just feed off each other's crazy ways. They also figured out how to gang up on us. Scary! We tried to get everyone down for early bedtime that night, but mother nature had other plans. About 30 minutes after we put the boys down, and after the 5th time TJ and I had gone to Trip's room to tell the boys to go to bed, a huge thunderstorm hit us. The wind and rain were blowing so hard, that our trees were bending over to the ground. We made an executive decision to bring the kids down until the storm passed...no big deal for the boys who had still not managed to fall asleep, but sweet Mady had to be woken from a deep sleep. She handled it well, and went right back to sleep after the storm was over. The boys, however, had trouble. I think they finally went to bed around 10:30 or 11 pm. CRAZY! Everyone was up by 8 am the next morning, slightly cranky, but ready to play at the pool. So, we wore them all out and everyone took a great nap Saturday afternoon. It started storming again around dinner time on Saturday, so after we ate, we had a movie night. We popped popcorn and watched the Rescuers Down Under. Note to self: NEVER watch a movie with 3 kids that no one has ever seen before. I don't think we went more than 30 seconds between each question. It was either, "why," "what's going to happen," "is he going to be ok," the list could go on and on. Anyway, I really have no idea what happened in the movie, but I had some great popcorn. :-) Sunday morning everyone was up even earlier, so we loaded up the golf cart again and went out for a donut breakfast. Again, each child picked out their own donut and each one picked a different one. It just amazed me. We went for another swim and then it was time for Nick to leave us. Thank you, Graham and Katie for letting us love on Nick for the weekend. It was a joy! I think we've all almost recovered from our fun weekend. Hopefully, we can have both boys next time.