Cousin Cheetah visits

Okay, “Cousin M” isn’t the most exciting name. I figured I would ask him what he wants to be and he decided Cousin Cheetah (from here on just called Cheetah).
Aunty K had to work today and being school holidays Cheetah was being looked after by the grandies so I asked if he wanted to come and play for the afternoon. All parties agreed on it and Lion and Dragon woke up from their naps to find Cheetah here! YAY! What an afternoon it was…
We love Duplo (or Duplaya as Lion calls it) and they decided to get all the different machines together with their different parts and correct drivers. I decided the results might be an opportunity to get a nice photo of the boys all together. it was a bit of a challenge… so a montage was in order so you can appreciate the full challenge that I faced. Cheetah isn’t great with doing a natural looking smile on cue and Lion is getting a bit the same. The big cheesy grin wasn’t what I was after so I thought I would say silly things to get them to smile or even giggle. Obviously I am funnier that I realise. A winner is always “daddy wears pink undies” or anything ending in “undies” kids find funny and their face is in the right shape for a smile (Same principle as “cheese” only not quite so boring) so then it just went on and on and on… 12 photos later this is the result.

After I had given up and hoped that at least one of the photos was just what I wanted (close but not really) I thought I would just take a few of each of them. None were really in the mood by that time. I did get this very cute shot of Dragon doing the serious job of making digger noises.

In our house the end of Playschool signals morning or afternoon tea. Playschool finished and I whipped up a big bowl of plain popcorn for them, they were quiet for about 15 minutes, it was great!

Eventually I took them all outside to stop the house falling down around us and Dragon found Lion’s gumboots he had left outside. He looks like a little farmer trudging though the grass.

Lion came up with a great game on the swing set where the rocking sort of swing is a rescue helicopter, the roman rings next to it and the disc swing next to that are the winches to get the “rescue men” down to the water to save the people. Dragon was the pilot and Lion and Cheetah were the rescue men. Cheetah was hanging upside down on the rings at one point and explained his rescue tactics to me… he hangs upside down so he has his hands free to pluck someone from the ocean, he grabs them bythe ankles so they have their hands free to grab the next person by their ankles and they have their hands free to grab the next person by their ankles and so on.

Thankfully they all made it back into the rescue chopper and safely to land. Then the rescue chopper became a fire helicopter and it just kept going.

I kept trying to do work inside while they were all playing nicely, it didn’t work. Each time I went inside things descended to chaos so I was in and out and in and out and I gave up. WHAT AN AFTERNOON!