Excitement was in the air. We were going to have a slumber party! Hope kept talking about going to a slumber party. I tried to tell her we weren't going anywhere, cousins Owen & Clay were coming over Sunday evening and we were going to have a slumber party at our house. Timothy & Kristy arrived with their 3 sons Saturday afternoon at the airport. It had been over a year since we had seen them. Christopher being only 3 weeks old was a great traveler but they had their hands full on those long flights with a 3 yr old, almost 2 yr old and a newborn.

The Halls are here in the States for nearly a month. However, with their full schedule there was only 2 dates on the calendar that worked to have the older cousins spend the night together and the second night they were here was the first and best choice. So Clay arrived around 4:30 and Uncle Timothy was gracious enough to spend some time in the pool with the children. Then they moved on to pizza, popcorn, apples, grapes and fruit tea as they watched movies the rest of the night. Clay, suffering from jet lag, was the first one out at 10:00. I invited him into the kitchen where he and I shared some cookie dough that I was baking for the rest of them (but never gave them) and 5 minutes later he was passed out on the floor in the den.

Grace was next at 11:00 and we were down to the last 3...Landis, Hope and Owen. Landis fell asleep before the midnight hour and Hope followed minutes later. However, Owen was steadfast in his quest to not give up the ghost. He stayed glued to The Three Little Pigs and when I suggested several times that he lay down to watch the movie, he quickly informed me that he didn't want to. When the pigs movie was over at 1:00, he told me he was ready for another movie! I almost laughed when I told him he definitely was NOT going to watch another movie and he needed to lay his head down on the pillow. He sat there in his bedding and was very reluctant about giving in so I gently pushed his little tired body down into the horizontal position. He was out in 2 minutes.