Visitors!

My godson Mario was here!!! He, his mom Laura, and his grandparents are driving from Alaska to Texas. Laura is a Captain in the Air Force and is relocating to a new base.

It's been ages since I've seen them last and I've been looking forward to this visit for months. They called Sunday morning and we got to spend all day together. It was great! (Though I will say that after 12 hours of focused play with a 6-year-old boy I'm wiped out!) We fed the ducks in the park, spent 3 hours (!) in the pool, and went to the Playground of Dreams.

My godson has always been big for his age but I was suprised to see how tall he's grown. He just finished Kindergarten, is 6 years old, 4'10" and 95 pounds! The child is going to grow to NBA height!

The swimming pool was great fun as I got to watch him gain confidence in the water. Three years ago he lived in Tx and loved the water. But that was a long time ago. He doesn't yet swim so he wore a life vest for the first while. Then we progressed to jumping with the vest on, then jumping without the vest onto noodles and then to jumping without warning. The last part wasn't so cool as he doesn't yet do a great job of resurfacing after said jump.

On a side note, his mom and I now know Mario as a "three noodle kid". Noodles are great fun and I've seen kids and adults both enjoy relaxing as the float on one. With only one noodle, Mario still sank. I swear, his muscle is more dense than normal. Anyway, with two noodles, he was keeping his head up but three noodles was definately the comfortable way to go. That's alot of floatation for one kid!

We had a wonderful time. Laura and I didn't get a chance to talk much as Mario kept our attention on him but hopefully we'll get to yak more over email. They left this morning for Oregon to visit great-grandma prior to California to visit family and go to Disneyland. I miss them already.