A glorious weekend!

A couple of weekends ago, I was Extended a generous offer to come to Fiesta night at the Cornelious's house, and possibly even stay the night, partly because it's a pretty long drive. I drove down about an hour early to help them get set up, though primarily because that meant that I got to spend an extra hour with them. :)
Fiesta night was loads of fun, and I got so see some other people that I hadn't seen in quite some time. One of the games we played was called Ninja. Everybody stands in a circle, and taking turns, tries to slap the hand of the person standing next to them. Easy, right? But there's a catch. After you swing at they're hand, you have to stay in that position, and you can only move when somebody else tries to slap your hand. It makes for some rather humorous photos.

 Mr. Long Arm.

You what!?!

I didn't make it to bed until really late that night, actually, it wasn't until early the next morning. We talked about so many things, that I didn't bother to watch the time, that is, until it we got really tired, and noticed what time it was. So I wasn't able to journal about all the events of the day, so I was trying to catch up the next morning. I got a few paragraphs done, but then these little munchkins started showing up, and It quickly became obvious that I wasn't going to get much written down.

 This little girl, Maryann is her name, almost always had a cheerful countenance about her.

That morning, after we finished putting the sheetrock up in the shop, Mr. Cornelious and a couple of the boys suited up, and we went out to gather honey!

Yes, there is a boy in that suit.

That cart weighed about 600 pounds! And that was only about 3-4 hives.

This is What Maryann and Josh were doing while we pulled honey. Not sure how it got started.

Mrs. Cornelious bought a treadmill off of Craigslist while I was there, and once they got it set up, all of the kids just couldn't wait to get a turn on it.

Family bonding time. I hooked my laptop up to they're TV, and we played some Angry Birds!

So come saturday afternoon I was dreading not looking forward to the prospect of having to drive home that night, and end my lovely sojourn with them. As it got closer to dinner time, one of the boy's asked if I was staying for dinner, and Cheryl said that I was invited, but that I'd probably have to stay the night if I did. (Muffled "Yippee" followed on my part) So I gave Dad a somewhat nervous call, hoping that I hadn't left something undone at home that I had to go home and fix, or that there was something on the calendar that I had to be home for. My fears were much relieved when Dad said that it'd be fine. (followed by a not quite so muffled exclamation of joy) So the adventure continues!

The next day being sunday, I got to go to the Church they attend.

Maryann blinked.

After Church, and more honey extracting, Eric invited me to go Kayaking with him on the river! That was super cool of him, I'll remember that trip for a long time. I'd never been kayaking before, so it was quite the learning experience, and I managed to only flip once! There were some pretty good rapids, for me at least, and there were some slow parts. It's was loads of fun, and we got to talk quite a bit. I asked him a bunch of questions about life, and when his had been like before I met him, how he and Cheryl met, why he joined the army, etc. Here's some photos that Cheryl took with my camera after she dropped us off.

Once we got back from that, it was starting to get late, and I was planning on packing up and heading home. I would have loved to stay another night, but I had already stayed two, and I didn't want to overstay my welcome. But then one of the boys came to my rescue again. Or maybe Cheryl asked if I'd like to stay for another night, I don't quite remember how it happened. But however it did, and I got to stay yet another night! 

I should mention that dinner that night was really, really good. But since Cheryl had been gone for a large portion of the afternoon, she wasn't home to cook it. So Laura Cooked the whole meal, with minimal help from Mrs. Cornelious, while baby sitting her 5 younger siblings. Did I mention that it was really good?

Anyway, so the next day they're friends the germonds (the first photo of this post has two of them) were having they're annual labor day BBQ! Dad had said last night that I had to come home on monday, so I drove my van there so that I could head straight home once it was late. So with Ben and Michael riding with me, we headed for the BBQ. As you might expect at a BBQ, there was a lot of great homemade food and desserts.

Here's Gabe wearing his Daddy's sunglasses.

'click'

They set up a slip and slide, so I attempted to get photos as kids were sliding down it. This is the best one that I got.

6pm rolled around way to soon for my liking. So I had to start the journey home. After saying goodbye to the kids and and Mr. and Mrs. Cornelious, I got in the van and started driving, my eye's only slightly moist. It was a great weekend, and I look forward with great anticipation to going back sometime in the future. 

Thank's Cornelious's!!