I feel I'm finally reclaiming my house.

See, Darren's sister and her 3 year old twins visited us for a week. Now, these kids are as adorable as they come. However, they don't have many boundaries, so we were all in shell shock after about day 3. They stayed in Mikey's room, and on top of him feeling extremely displaced, they destroyed many things that he had worked on. His room was a disaster. He and I just spent 10 minutes picking up, reclaiming spaces, and making the room his again. He's much calmer.

My poor kids. They were in the process of getting back into the school routine. Instead, they were kept awake until 1 am, and often were awakened at 3 am by kids jumping on their beds. This was particularly difficult for Emily. She runs at 6 am, and is out of bed by 5:30. She was kind of grumpy after several nights of 2 hour sleep.

One night, the kids came to us and begged, "Can we PLEASE sleep in the camper tonight? We'll get a good night's sleep. I promise!"  This was to be their escape. Instead, Aunt and Cousins came out and had popcorn and played games. Emily was in tears. Matt and Mikey were complaining. However, they left by 11:00 and by 11:15, they were all snoringly asleep. It was the best sleep they got that entire week.

Our niece is nut and egg allergic, so we had to be pretty careful about our kitchen. It was rearranged to keep dangerous things out of reach.  Some dangerous things were stored in the camper, even.   I'm finally starting to find my food again.

I sound like I'm complaining, but I'm not. It was definitely a change of pace for us, but I would never EVER change a moment of it. Those kids are adorable, and I am so blessed to be able to connect with them. I love them to pieces! It was nice to reconnect with Cindy, too. I hope that she will stay in contact with us. We had lots of fun, although we didn't get a lot of rest.

Hindsight 20/20, I would probably do it again. However, we've kind of agreed to take the train and meet halfway next time. Let the hotels clean and organize after us! Heh.