Cousins

One of the really great things about being back in Texas is being near my family. I have one of those awesome southern families where we have lots of cousins who aren't even actually related, but are those cool people you see every holiday so you never really realize until you're older that you had a first cousin who was once married to a guy who had an in-law who is your cousin. It's kind of awesome actually.

This weekend, we had family come up for the Texas State Fair. They came to our house Saturday night and then we met for lunch yesterday. The kids who are about a year apart respectively had a grand time. It was really cool. Andy has asked if George can come over for a sleepover tomorrow. Poor kid doesn't realize Austin is three hours away.

As for the fair, I went on Friday with my sister and another friend to experience all sorts of treats, like Texas Caviar (fried black eyed peas) and Chicken Fried Steak on a Stick. Both were good, but not fantastic. What was great though? Fried Chocolate. It was basically a chocolate donut with whipped cream and powered sugar that tasted kind of like a brownie. Good stuff.

Still darling angel babies

My cousins from Austin, Susie and Katherine "P.J.", are here this week touring the capital city. After having a ball last night drinking wine, we got up relatively early to tour Hillwood, Marjorie Merriweather Post's estate in Northwest D.C., before heading to the National Zoo. Both my children were angels, despite the moderate heat, a little bit of rain and a whole lot of walking. My cousins were angels, too. I believe Andy is totally in love with P.J. though. I can't say I blame him -- she is cute and totally dotes on him and keeps telling him how cute and smart he is. Who doesn't love that?

I posted pictures of their visit on Flickr. Enjoy. Oh, and the one on the right here is PJ showing Andy that her tongue is also green from the popsicle. As you can see, he is totally enamoured.

Cousins

My cousin John got his Ph.D. this past weekend in Pittsburgh and the rest of the Dean cousins celebrated later in Virginia. Unlike the older generation though, we celebrated with red wine and not Scotch and cigarettes.

White

We have returned from what was eventually sunny California. We stopped in Los Angeles on the way out to visit Bjorn's brother and his family. Andy loved playing with Zane, who is 4, and was quite entertained by the toys for the 11-month-old Simone. Zane is a pretty energetic kid and Simone is a pretty quiet, content little girl so I think their personalities were a little more in sync. It was really funny to see the different stages just by looking at what each kid was doing.

Andy was so tired from the travels that he fell asleep on takeoff yesterday and slept for two hours. I hadn't been paying attention to the weather and was shocked to come home and find that it had snowed several inches and was icy on the roads. It took us a lot longer to get home from Dulles due to the sand and salt trucks on the Beltway - not that we minded, we were glad they were there. Andy finally got to bed around midnight and did not want to wake up this morning. About nine, I finally went in and picked him up. He was ready to stay asleep until I pointed out the window to the snow. He was so surprised. "White, white," he kept saying. He liked the snow, except for the fact that it's wet. How I ended up with a kid fastitious about being clean is beyond me.