The Borders: Family Fun Part Two

So again it has taken me too long to update our blog. Hopefully once I get current with it I will be able to get back to updating more often.
After our busy first weekend back in Illinois, Kyle headed back to Missouri to go to his course. The kids and I worked our way from house to house trying to spend as much time as possible with everyone in the family. One of our first trips was over to my mom's. We all had great time.

Enjoying some video game time

All of us girls managed to get in the same photo

The Wednesday after we got there, Kyle's mom, Lori, surprised the the family by flying in to visit for the week as well. We knew she was coming but most of the rest of the family did not. It was nice to have another surprise homecoming take place while we were there. While she was in town, Pam, a friend of the family and her daughter, Brooklynn, for the weekend as well. Let's just say that Krystal had a full house. There was a lot of screaming from the kids playing but there was a huge amount of fun that was had. We also had a big family dinner that Saturday as well. There were several generations of family there and it was nice to see everyone together.

Playin after dinner

Eatin at Chevy's

This trip was also the first time Alec and Hailey have met two of their cousins. Both Logan and Xander are close to Alec's age (Xander's only a day younger than Alec), but I think he would have been excited no matter what their age simply because he was no longer the only boy in the house. It took an extended photo session to try and get 5 kids under the age of 8 to sit still long enough for a photo. After about 9 attempts, I finally got a good picture of all of them.

All five of them finally looked at me and smiled...well sort of

One night we went to listen to a story teller at Mina and Dylan's school and then we made cupcake sundaes. I think the sundaes were their favorite part.

Before dinner at Chet and Lisa's the kids flew kites with Jordan, Sydnee, and Kassi. Some kites flew more successfully than others. Alec had some trouble with the one he had chosen but luckily Jordan helped him fly hers. What we thought would be a wonderful windy day for flying kites turned out to be a little too much wind. The kids had a good time even though the wind was a little harsh.

This is about as high as his kite ever got

Luckily it was Aunt Jordan to the rescue!

We continued to travel every day to spend as much time as possible, with as many people as possible in the little time we had. Kyle was able to come down on the weekend while he was off school so we all visited various places as a family. It was a wonderful but exhausting trip...but worth every second. I tried to get as many photos as possible and visit as many places as possible because we don't know when we will be able to come out and visit again.
Once the trip was over and we had to head back to the airport, mother nature decided to throw us a curveball. She decided that snow would be an appropriate send-off for the girl who lives in tropical paradise. Luckily we managed to get the rental car returned before the snow started to fall. I guess I should be thankful for that. We got on the plane and it was delayed almost an hour because of the snow. We started to taxi out and came back to the gate so they could put a more effective de-icer on the planes wings. After the second coat of de-icer was on we were headed down the runway and the copilot came down the aisle to look out the window at the wing. He informed us that they wanted to make sure the de-icer was doing the job. I tried to stay as calm as possible for the kids (and myself) and thankfully we managed to take off without a hitch. The rest of the flights went off without a hitch. Though we miss the family, I was thankful to make it back to more Brandi-appropriate weather. All together it was a wonderful trip with a ton of memories.