A weekend with Lewis

This is sorta the second part of the previous post on a weekend with Art in Arkansas. A week later Lewis and I left this past Friday night and returned Sunday for a weekend at the cottage (4-hrs away in Wisconsin). Caught many fish tiny, ate tasty indulgent things, played chess, were bored together. There were no other children to share his Papa with. Lewis gets what he’s literally never had before, my undivided attention for a couple days.

Now I think the same is true for the girls. Often we wrap them together as on unit, ‘the girls’. But the idea of taking just one girl to the cottage for the weekend would be pretty amazing and fun. For either parent! They so rarely experience the world independent from their twin, could be pretty fun for them! That’ll be next somehow.

Here are some photos from me and Lewis’ weekend adventure.

We caught a few dozen fish and returned them all (except one!).

The photo I texted Jessica after arriving 1am Friday night. A nice sight for a tired driver.

At Ray’s Close-Outs in downtown Hancock, Wisconsin. 

Lewis, our budding naturalist, found this next in the reeds by the beach.

Lewis actually beat me fair and sqaure in one of the three games we played. I was focusing on attacking his king and them bam, his queen flew over and check mated me. What!? Told him not to tell ANYONE I was beaten by a 7-year-old in chess.

Lewis has inherited the same inner-pryo his father has.

The one large fish that we ate. I should’ve filleted it but chopping off it’s head and throwing it on the grill is so much easier and requires less knife-skills which I lack.
Part of the cottage experience is all about FOOD. And I got a trio of Lewis’ favorite vegetables. We also had sugary cereal, watermelon, brats, frozen pizza, chips and in my case, Sulry Furious beer.

On the drive home we stopped to take a little nature walk/run in nature.

A weekend with Art

It is rare that any child in our family gets alone time with one adult. Four kids, so much to do, so little time. There’s a constant jockeying and competition for our attention and it can be burden on the kids and also on their parents! So it’s with this in mind I write to share the first of a couple special weekends each boy had of late where memories were made.

Jessica stays at home and is old news! And it’s not fair! She’s amazing and the rocks of our family, we all love and rely on her so much. But since she’s usually around and she’s sorta less sparkly and new in the kids eyes. It’s a bummer but it’s also just the way it is right now in our lives. So a weekend with just Papa is an especially extraordinary and fun thing for these boys. Last weekend Arthur joined as we traveled to Fayetteville, Arkansas, my childhood home, to attend (and me photograph) my cousin Hanna’s wedding. 20 hours in the car together, playing in Arkansas, eating out at fancy restaurants like Taco Bell, watching scary movies, some memories were made and special time had.

It took about 3 minutes for Arthur to get into Nanna’s hot tub once we arrived.

Somebody we saved from a gory, squishy death on the road.

Wendy’s art

On the return trip I download a couple movies ahead of time. Jurassic Park and Back to the Future. Two movies Art can’t watch at home cause he has littler siblings. Jurassic Park was especially awesome and scary and fun.

A group photo from my cousin Hannah’s wedding. Lots of people I love in this photo! Can you find Art?
As usual I failed to get a decent photos of Art with my beautiful mother Nan. But there is this on her backporch. She’s a master gardender in my view. Don’t you just love that bush in the background? So beautiul!

Lastly, a photo of Sam Miller. Art and I were eating at a crappy-ish Mexican restaurant in Carthage, MO, when i saw this fellow across the room struggling to breathe. I checked in with him and helped him unfreeze his oxygen tank by dousing it in water. Once the O2 began to flow we sat down and chatted for a while. A wonderful old man and someone Art and I will remember a long time.

Power windowed nose

Here’s a tiny funny moment in time. Arthur kept interrupting me as I was trying to talk to his younger sisters. So I stopped the car, stuck him outside and rolled up all the windows. Listen closely and you can hear a faint “I was talking firrrrrst.” It was a real discovery power windows make this possible…

Son kept interrupting, stuck him outside the car. "I was talking firrrrst" don't believe him A video posted by Ben Garvin (@bengarvin) on May 12, 2015 at 5:51pm PDT