I always enjoy spending time with family and even more so during Holidays. Weeks ago, my cousin called to say that she, her husband and their kids would not be able to come up for Christmas afterall. Her husband, Mike, is in the ARMY based at Ft. Campbell. After 3 suicides/deaths in his unit within days of one another, his unit was told that they would not be allowed outside of a 60 mile radius (60 or 70) from the base between that time period and their deployment time (more to come on that in a future blog). Days before Christmas, he and some of the other soldiers received a pass to leave the base. Thankfully, they were all able to come for Christmas. They arrived in St. Louis at around midnight on Friday evening. My Grandpa's birthday is December 23rd so we all went to lunch to celebrate with him. Afterwards, my 2 young cousins, Rose and Adrianna, decided they wanted to come home with Haley and me. On our way home, I had Haley stop at Dairy Queen to get them ice cream as a special treat. As we rode in Haley's car that is in desperate need of new shocks, the car bounced non-stop. I laughed till I almost peed in my pants when Adri (4) said, "This car is bumpy, you have bumpy wheels!" The fun continued as we sang "Rudolph" numerous times at Adri's request. We made it home and both girls were great helpers as Haley and I had some more cleaning to do before our mema and uncle from AL arrived. Once I cleaned, I began helping them make a reindeer ornament but we had to stop shortly after we started as we did not have the right kind of glue. Both girls accepted that news just fine and moved on to finding a game for us to play with one another-SORRY. Chanda (their mother, my cousin) hesitated on sending Adri with us, asking me repeatedly if I was sure it was OK for her to come along. I told her she wouldn't be any trouble and as expected, she was not. I had a blast with my little monkeys!!
