Cousin Time

We just had a great set of new visitors! My younger cousins, Brian and his wife Tiffinie, and my cousin Kyle (he and Brian are brothers) and his girlfriend Cierra came to visit! They came Wednesday night and left Sunday afternoon - we had such a wonderful visit! It was their first time to come to Minnesota and it had also been quite some time since we've all seen each other, so it all just worked out perfectly.

Thursday, we did some touring of downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. We had lunch in a cute little pub in St. Paul. Tiffinie got quite a funny expression from the waitress when she tried to order a sweet tea with lunch. :) We got some great pictures at the famous "cherry and the spoon" in the sculpture gardens downtown too. Luckily, we had some great weather while they were here - lots of beautiful sunshine! That night, we went snowtubing too! Tiffinie got to be the photographer and enjoy the warming house since she is pregnant with Baby Kaylee! We had a great time tubing and the guys enjoyed racing each other. Then we went to Ole Piper for some pizza!

Friday was our Mall of America day! The girls were so excited - and I have to say that we covered more area in the mall than I ever have! We even found a new mirror maze - so we all went through it. Boy was it funny! I trailed Tiffinie and at one point we saw Cierra motioning for us to come a certain way. We tried to follow but then bumped into a mirror and we hear Cierra saying "No, this way!" It was just too hard to tell which one of her was the real one! After lunch, the guys left to go ice fishing. They had a good time and all caught fish, so it was a successful trip! While they were doing that, us girls went and got much needed massages and then headed to dinner!

Saturday, we decided we would have a lazy day. We played games pretty much all day long (I was in heaven), except for a break to go outside and sled down the hill in our back yard area and play in the snow. The games were a blast - and we had many a good laughs. Let's just say that at one point, Brian literally fell on the floor and was practically crying because he was laughing so hard.

I have to say the highlight of the trip was our dinner Saturday night. Brian and Tiffinie asked Kyle and I to be the Godparents of their baby who is due in May! I feel so honored to be asked to be their baby's Godmother and it is something that means the world to me. So Michael and I will now have a baptism this summer to look forward to in Texas!

It was sad to take them to the aiport today because I hated for them to leave. But, I'm just so grateful for the nice long visit we had with them. We've never had that kind of long quality time to spend together, so it really was just so wonderful. I'm blessed with some great cousins (and cousin-in-laws!)!

At the sculpture gardens

Tiffinie, me and Cierra

Kyle having fun with picture poses at the spoon!

Me and the cousins tubing - did I mention they are really tall?

Brian, Tiffinie, Kyle & Cierra - resting up for Mall of America!

Battling it out at the Mall :) (Gig Em)

Confused in the mirror maze!

Brian ice fishing!

Michael with fish #5!

Sledding time!

Michael going down!

Snow fight!

Playing cranium - Brian acting out a charades part of the game