Sunday, July 4th - Thursday, July 8th - cousin time!

The bride and groom live around the corner from Paul's mom's house in a 4BR house of their own. They very graciously offered their house to us as a place for us to stay while we stayed in the area and visited Paul's parents and several of his siblings (and some of the kids' cousins).

I have always loved their neighborhood. It is fairly large and has a small convenience store and 2 parks. You can get to these places by driving, or by walking on really neat paths - some on pavement,




















and some through the woods!




















This is the small park where the kids have played over the years. I love the addition of the round about that pedals to make it go.














This is the big park with the super fun obstacle course!















The kids have mostly moved on to this bigger park. Sigh. John still likes the smaller park, but mostly he keeps up with his siblings.






























We've even entered the "get together and do gymnastics" phase!




















Go Andrew!















That's our boy!



















These are fun swings - long chains and nice seats. They go high and fast!
















Recently (at least recently to us), the park added these rocks to climb. The kids had a BLAST!







































Everyone made it.































The neighborhood had a BBQ and carnival while we were visiting. What great timing!

We were relieved to see that Andrew's back seemed totally fine. (He's in the red shirt)















John liked to try different positions on the slide.
















The girls liked it, too. Megan is SOOOO good with John!















They had tons of books on sale - 7 for about $1.50. We couldn't resist....but WHAT were we thinking???? We were trying to REDUCE luggage, not add to it! Still, it was fun to have more British books to read, and for $1.50, how can you go wrong??

We had a pretty relaxing week, just hanging out at the park, and then seeing cousins after school. We also got to spend some time with some of Paul's siblings. Clare is due with her first this Sunday! We are hoping she will deliver by her due date, so when we swing back down to Fleet just before our trip home, we can see the baby! Doesn't she look FANTASTIC! I bet you can't tell that she's 9mo pregnant!















It's always good to hang out and visit the grandparents and Paul's siblings and the cousins. Next, we drive North, to Manchester, to visit more cousins.