They left :(

On October 1st, my sister Narelle and her family arrived from America to spend 2 1/2 weeks with my family. We haven't all been together for 3 years, and they had never met my youngest nephew, Caleb.
It was a great time! It was very busy because we were trying to cram a lot of stuff into the short time, but it was great to spend time with the kids and get to know everyone better.

I had lots of fun chasing Jared (the youngest) around the house threatening to kiss him. Jekkie (2nd youngest) would run away a little bit, but mostly she would turn her head to avoid the kisses. It was fun hugging them and mucking around with them.

Lydia and Jordan were lots of fun to hang out with, but they would just ignore me when I gave them a kiss so I didn't get a chance to chase them over the house much.
Although, Jordan would 'hit' me and then run down the other end of the house, so that was fun :P

Jekkie had this thing where, once she liked you and accepted you she would hit you. It was really funny seeing the confused looks of people once she decided to accept them :P

We went down to Mt. Gambier to visit my other older sister who lives down there. Narelle and her family had never seen her house, and they really wanted to see it. We spent a few nights down there, and while it was fun it was also really noisy because she has a smaller house and so the noise seemed to be twice what it normally was because there was so many people and kids there!

On Monday (just gone) it was a really nice sunny day (the first day since they'd come) so we headed to the beach. It was so lovely and warm and lots of fun to hang out. A couple of other homeschooling families came, and the kids had loads of fun hanging out and playing with them. A few of us got mildly sunburnt (despite the sunscreen), but we didn't mind.

They left on Tuesday and I didn't want them to go :( Lydia and I talked about shredding the tickets so that they had to stay, but that would've been pretty costly for them so we decided against it.

I'm really thankful that I got to spend time with them, but the house seems a lot emptier :(
However, at the same time it seems to have settled back into routine fairly easily, so that's something to be thankful for as well :)