Family

We had a busy, but very fun, family-filled weekend. Saturday we took Brady to the Botanical Center with the hopes of overcoming his fear of sand. They had brought in a ton of sand (literally) and placed it around a palm tree for kids to play in. It wasn't quite what we thought it would be, but Brady still had fun. I think he enjoyed feeding the fish in the koi pond even more.

Let me explain Brady's fear of sand. Last summer I took Brady to the local water park. During pool checks they have a sandy area for the kids to play in. We went in to the sand area, I set Brady down, and he screamed bloody murder. Like, everyone stopped what they were doing to look at him, screaming. The sand wasn't hot. It was in the shade. I'm guessing it's because it's not a solid surface and kind of hard to walk on, but thankfully we are over that now. He had absolutely no desire to go in the sand at first on Saturday, so we set him in, started playing, and finally, he was walking around in it, no problem. We're the throw them in there and let them figure it out type of parents.

On Sunday, we met my dad and his girlfriend for lunch in Iowa City. Brady was still kicking after lunch, so we headed over to the mall to ride on the carousel. My dad took him. He was so excited to go on it, but after a couple circles he started whining and trying to get off and saying, "out". I know I shouldn't laugh, but it was hilarious. The look on his face was priceless! Here is a before picture.



After that excitement we took him over to the play area and he went to town. No joke, after about 2 minutes he had a little girl following him around. Such a lady's man. After some kicking and screaming, we said our good-byes. He was asleep the second we got on the interstate.

After his nap, we headed over to Brad's parent's house for dinner. Brad's sister and our nephew were there also. Him and Brady are about a year and a half apart, but still have so much fun together. They got to sit at the kids table to eat. It was hilarious listening to them. They were perfectly content just having their own conversation, ignoring everything else that was going on around them.

It's so wonderful having family close. After living in the Chicago suburbs, and being 2 1/2 hours from Brad's family and 5+ hours from mine, we have realized how blessed we are to now be so close to them. We think it's so important for Brady to know his grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. Family is everything to us. We learned the hard way that except for a few really great friends (you know who you are), family are the ones who will always be there for you when times are hard.