The arrival of his 'Highness..."

His Highness, the Royal Michael Matthew Tichy (Karen's brother's son) arrived with his mom and dad for a week-long visit at the end of August. It's funny, but that's what his parents call him, 'his Highness'. And he tries to live up to the name.

All kidding aside, John, Melissa and Michael came for a visit. It was great to see them all, as it had been a year since we saw them last.

They stayed up in the cities for the first part of the trip, then they traveled down to Nelson to stay near Oma for a few days. We visited the Tichlins at their hotel in Edina and visited the indoor play area - Edinborough. It wasn't very busy (very nice) and we got to play all morning. We also played a little in their hotel room as well, then had lunch. We also spent time at our house, showing Michael our collection of toys that we have accumulated over the years. Cailin and Andrew were happy to share their toys and 'show' him how to use everything.

So we took to the camper down for the latter part of the week and were able to spend additional time with them down there at oma's place. We took our camper and hooked up to Mom's red barn for electricity. John, Melissa and Michael stayed at a condo in Wabasha for the week (since mom has two foreign exchange students staying with her for the school year).

We all had fun playing together. The kids got a long great. We were thrilled (probably less thrilled than Michael's parents) to show Michael a few 'new' things that hopefully will remind him of his Minnesota cousins, such as fruit loops cereal, hot dogs and toys out the ying yang.
Michael has grown so much and the kids played well together.

Andrew had big fun driving Oma's tractor around the yard. We also played in the pool quite a bit and managed to splash almost every bit of water OUT of the pool by playing a jumping game called 'chop, chop, timber', where they would stand for the chop, chop part and jump up in the air and kersplash into the pool for the timber part (from swim lessons...). Oh, what fun!
Cailin was excited to float in the pool. Masher enjoyed, well mashing in the pool.