Return to January Pt 2: Fun with Cousins

Fun with cousins was an essential part of our trip in January. I could have been sad, otherwise, that the cold, the craziness of 4 million people camping out in the district to watch the inauguration or the finite energy and attention levels of my children kept us from seeing everything (or some reasonably calibrated portion thereof) there is to see in Washington, DC and environs. But in the fun with cousins category, we were not disappointed. (And my dear nephew T wants, I am told, to appear in at least some of the pictures in this post since he participated in the fun)

Essential to fun with cousins is having a "fun aunt" which my children are blessed to have in Aunt Tiffie T. (T because they have two and while both Aunt Tiffies are fun, they weren't both in Virginia) Aunt Tiffie decided that the kids needed to have a mentos and diet coke rocket experience and so she did research as to the best method for making the best explosions. She convinced Grandpa T to get out tools and drill the mentos for the best delivery system

and she heated the diet coke because the best instructions said to (and there was no sun or heat to be had naturally outdoors). And then, the amazing fun began:


Another part of the fabulous fun with cousins was, of course, going to the cool museums with them.


I mean, really, what could be cooler than sitting in the cockpit of a real live plane pretending to fly it, than sitting in that plane pretending with your real live cool cousin?

For some reason, whenever we go to the grandparents', we end up spending at least one excursion at Frying Pan Park. It is a working historical farm complete with exhibition space for horse shows, farm animals to investigate and ogle and playground and picnic accoutrements. And since all these things are essential in the growth and development of your average full-energied kid, we always go there, no matter what the weather. So, despite the less than toasty temp of the days this trip, we visited the park as usual. The picnic just looked a bit different:

But coats and hats aside, our trip to the park was about as cool and as similar as it always is. And I'm sure it will not be the last.


On our last full day with cousins on our trip, we (the adults involved) thought long and hard about what to do. It was a holiday, so all the adults were at least nominally free from at least the location of work. But it was a holiday, the day before the inauguration and wicked cold, so we worried that all tourist destinations would be miserable and crowded. But we didn't want to spend our last day together cooped up telling the children to stop and don't and get down and all other least favorite words heard by children from their parents. So, Grandma T hit upon a grand idea: let's have a day of activities in stations at the Brown house. There was a craft station:

a Wii station:

and an art station: (the new definition of "shirts and skins")

Really, what more could you want? Such a delightful trip. I'm getting wistful all over again just remembering it. I feel like I'm displaying my embarrassment of riches: a crazy wonderful family that loves each other and wants to spend time together in (literally) all kinds of weather. What could be better than this?