My sister, brother-in-law, and nieces came out from Arizona to visit for the long weekend. It was the first time they’ve been out here in 4 and a half years. My youngest niece was in utero the last time they were here. I get why it makes sense for us to go out there more frequently than they come here, but it was nice to have them come out here to visit for a change.
They got here on Saturday in the early evening. We walked over to one of the nearby parks. My eldest niece is very keen on the monkey bars right now. I could never really do the monkey bars very well, so I’m very impressed by her monkey bar prowess. The girls were also very excited to meet Tux, the stuffed penguin we always play with over Facetime, in person.
Sunday morning we down to the Inner Harbor and went on the Sea Dog boat ride. My eldest niece saw boats from the plane when they were flying in and said she wanted to go on a boat ride. It’s too bad the Urban Pirates cruise was sold out because I think they both would have loved that. As it was the eldest niece loved the ride and thought it was hysterical when I got completely soaking wet from a big splash, but the 4 year old was not keen on it at all. There were definitely some tears. It was too fast and too loud for her. After the boat ride we went on the carousel, which was much more her speed.
We went to Bo Brooks for lunch because my brother-in-law wanted crabs, but then we got there and they were out of crabs. A crab cake had to do. It was nice to sit outside on their patio anyway. After lunch we came back to my neighborhood and hit up a different playground. My eldest niece was not a fan because it did not have good monkey bars for her. We of course had to get some ice cream from The Charmery while they were here, so we did that after the playground. All the activity must have worn the girls out because the 4 year old fell asleep around 6, which is 3 their time, and wouldn’t wake back up.
Monday we went to the Orioles-Red Sox game. My brother-in-law’s sister lives in Northern Virginia so she came up with a friend to meet us for the game. They’re all from Boston and thus are Red Sox fans, so it worked out that the Red Sox were in town the weekend they were here. It was rather hot and humid at the beginning of the game, but at least we had club level seats so we could take the kids inside from some AC every once in awhile. It also happily didn’t rain like was in the forecast for several days leading up to the game. My youngest niece told me her favorite part of the weekend was the popcorn she ate at the ball game, so I guess she enjoyed it more than the boat ride. The Orioles lost so I was sad, but they were all happy.
We had originally planned to go to the aquarium on Tuesday morning, but my sister decided she didn’t want to spend that much money. We entertained going to the zoo instead, but after 2 hot days out in the sun my sister decided an inside activity would be better. We settled on Port Discovery, which is the children’s museum, instead. We got warned on our way in that they were expecting 350 school kids shortly, so we tried to do everything we could before the place was inundated. It didn’t turn out too bad. We probably didn’t stay quite as long as we would otherwise, but we mostly managed to hit everything before it got too crazy. After leaving the kid’s museum we hit what my niece had deemed the good park one more time so she could the monkey bars before they left for the airport.
It was a really fun weekend and I’m really glad they came. Hopefully it won’t be another 4 years before they make it out to visit again.
More Than Meh 