Day 69: The Goodbye's Begin

Posted by: Cris

Today we started saying goodbyes in preparation for returning home to Hawaii. The day started off with lots of excitement when Grandma Saccenti showed up at Aunt Coral's front door for some hardcore Grandma spoiling. Juneau was especially super excited. Grandma took the girls and headed out for a fun day of playing at the Imagination Station (formerly COSI Toledo). The girls came back tired but with lots of reports of the fun they'd had with Grandma. It was super awesome she was able to get the day off to come play with Juneau and Nova one more time before we left. This evening was time for one more round of what have become the nightly activities with the cousins. Playing in the basement, eating ice cream - the only one we skipped tonight was a dip in the hot tub.

Alex was incredibly hungry for ice cream tonight...fueling up for tomorrow's basketball game.

Lyndsey's signature "crazy eye" look

Somehow, the night developed into a few rounds of a "baby in a box" game...don't ask...I have no idea.

The night couldn't be complete without actually partaking in the Rice Krispie treats that Juneau & Nova helped Aunt Coral make last night. The goal was to make them and send some to Mommy. You can see that my girls still need some work on spreading the red sprinkles evenly across the pan.

When Aunt Coral cut the treats, the conversation when kind of like this:

Juneau: (pointing to the dark red area with the high-density sprinkles) "I want that piece"

Coral: "I thought you said you were going to send that piece to mommy"

Juneau: "No, I just want to eat it and then I'll tell mommy about it when she comes home."

Sitting in a box with a Rice Krispie treat, your blue blanket and a baby doll - Nova's idea of a perfect evening.

Since the girls will probably be asleep when everyone heads off to school and work in the morning, tonight was time to say goodbye to the cousins they've spent the large majority of the last 3 weeks with.

Finally settled down for one last night of cousins camp-out.
It was actually a little heartbreaking because there was a visible sadness from all 5 kids that their time together was coming to an end for now. Juneau and Nova will have a hard time getting used to not having the Matus cousins and Aunt Coral there to play with constantly. My girls are truly blessed to have such awesome cousins who so evidently love them so much and the feeling from my girls is clearly mutual. I am especially thankful that my girls have such good role models to look up to in Alex & Lyndsey in the years to come. I've watched you grow from my girls age into awesome young ladies - I'll be a happy dad if my girls turn out like you when they hit 12 years old (I'll also be very old by then).