The girls and I are down in LA visiting the grandparents right now. We are just coming off a whirl-wind weekend of fun. Suzy, Dan and their boys came up and we had a massive cousin-fest. It was absolutely wonderful. As the kids get older, they are beginning to play together more and more. There is something so sweet hearing two small people chat. At one point Leina and Daniel found themselves in a yes-no war. You remember these. One person takes “yes it is” and the other takes “no it’s not” and you go back and forth adnausium. So sweet.

Kulia spend the whole time trying to break into the big kids group. As the baby, she’ll have to get used to trailling behind the older cousins. They all did great with her but Daniel was especially sweet. He let Kulia climb all over him and loved giving her very gentle hugs and kisses. I think you can tell a lot about a child by how he or she acts around small babies and Daniel confirmed what I always knew. He is a very sweet boy.

Sammy and Leina picked right up as tumble buddies. At the beach, they would dig side by side. Outside, they’d play chase. If Leina wanted to run, Sammy was her man. She was tickled pink to have someone to go crazy with.

My favorite memory will be heading down to the beach together with sand toys and a big Nemo kite, watching dolphins swim by and waves crash, letting the kids dig in the sand and build sand castles, and running the bubble machine so the cousins could chase hundreds of little bubbles across the sand. I think Leina summed it up best when she turned to me at the end of the day and said, “mommy, today was the best day ever.”

Yes, honey, it certainly was!