Cousin Time

It's been over a week since I posted, and I have some catching up to do. To bring you up to date, I am now 12 weeks pregnant--in other words, first trimester completed and only 2 more to go! Also, Matthew's got 2 more teeth, though you won't see them in pictures. They are the middle molars on the bottom, and they broke through early last week. I guess that explains all the drooling as of late.

This post is mainly about Matthew and his cousin, Chesney. (FYI, they are 5 months apart) They got to see each other twice in the last 2 weeks, and they had a good time together. For the first week, Sarah and Donald were up this way so Sarah could attend our ladies' refresher banquet. When that was over, we had the whole family hang out at our house for a while.

At Matthew's House

Matthew and Chesney playing together.

Matthew sharing his toys.

Matthew loving on Aunt Sarah.

Daddy, can I slap Matthew? I promise I won't do it hard.

Come here, Chesney. I just want to touch your ear, I swear.

Then for Memorial Day weekend, we headed to Sarah and Donald's place, a little over 2 hours from us. Matthew didn't sleep on that trip, and he was hard to please and fussy. It was a little discouraging to see that he couldn't handle that length of trip, but the return ride was much better. He took a nap and was in a better mood, so the time seemed to go by faster as we went home. Anyway, we arrived on Saturday around noon and had lunch together. Sarah and Donald have a dog named Canyon. I thought Matthew would be afraid of her, since he's afraid of other dogs, but he warmed up to her after a while. As long as she didn't bark at him, he wasn't nervous. In fact, he was even brave enough to pet her.

At Chesney's House

Chesney sharing her toys with Matthew.

That afternoon we made our way to a Strawberry Festival. Ches and Matthew did well in their strollers. They both sampled some of our food, strawberry shortcake and a strawberry-banana drink. We listened to a live band that played folk-type music, and Matthew had a good time listening to them.

Some strawberry stuff left on his face--adorable! There was a big yard sale across the street, so we checked it out. We scored black dress shoes (size 5 1/2) for $2 and a pair of brown sketchers (size 7) for $2 as well. He doesn't fit in them now, but they were barely used and such a steal that we had to jump on it. He'll wear them someday.

Family picture (obviously) :)

Father/son pic (one of my favs)

There was a big tractor nearby, and since Matthew and Chesney's great-grandpa used to own a dairy farm, we had to get some pics.

One smiling.

Now the other one. of course we couldn't get them to both smile at the same time.

Sarah and Donald took us to the original Texas Roadhouse for dinner on Sunday (there was no Sunday evening service b/c of the holiday, and strangely, the original "Texas" Roadhouse is not located in Texas)

Matthew had fun wrestling with Uncle Donald that night, and Chesney begged to get in on the action too.

We left Monday afternoon and tried to get some pics of the kids together. It wasn't perfect, but it was fun. First Matthew cheesed it up for me while Chesney changed out of her pjs.

Acting like cousins already. Or maybe more like brother and sister. This'll be good practice for when Matthew's new sibling comes along.

Yeah, Matthew wasn't innocent. He decided to try and pull her hair to get even.


It looks like she's biting him, but I'd like to think she's giving her only cousin a kiss.


The next three are the closest we got of them smiling together.






And one final one of my boy giving a nice smile for the camera. I think Aunt Sarah was making him laugh.


And that was our trip. Like I said before, he was much better on the ride home. We had a great time, and Matthew liked playing with toys that he's never seen before. In fact, he like this steering wheel one so much that I just bought it for him today. But I'm saving it for later. We are vacationing in August, and that will be a long ride. I think it's smart to have a few new toys to introduce to him on the journey.