Uncle Shannon

Cullen turned 30 yesterday. His wife decided to surprise him by flying in his best friend, Shannon, to spend the weekend helping him celebrate. That worked out great for us, considering that Shannon is my brother and one of my favorite people in the whole world. His plane got in Thursday night, and we were in charge of picking him up. I invited Cullen over for dinner, and sent Connor to the airport with Mom since I knew he'd never be able to keep the secret. It worked- Cullen was surprised!


The boys played golf and hung out all day Friday and most of Saturday, but Saturday night we got together to "officially" celebrate the birthday. Although I was sad to leave the ravioli party without eating anything, it was worth it to hang with my bro and my now 30-something friend. After a full night of poker-playing and grossing Gina out with our dirty jokes, we brought Shannon home with us and he spent all day Sunday with us and Mom. The kids, Connor in particular, were thrilled to have Uncle Shannon around. No surprise, a day with my kids prompted Shannon to sleep about ten hours last night.
Here are Shannon's favorite stories from the weekend:
As soon as Shannon pulled on his Michigan ball cap, Connor was like, Mom, we're wearing hats- I'm going to need my Titans hat. Then he spent the rest of the afternoon going cross-eyed while trying to adjust the bill. Cross-eyed Connor is gold, Jerry! Gold!
While Shannon and the kids were playing outside, Chloe was trying to pet a neighborhood cat and it scratched her arm up pretty good. While Chloe was crying and being attended to, Connor descended on the cat prepared to make it pay for hurting his sister. We stopped him, but were all pretty proud of his protective instinct.
Connor, Mom and Shannon were at the store, and Connor worked himself into a frenzy over a box of rainbow-colored Goldfish. Mom told him that we had Goldfish at home, to just wait, and Shannon predicted, "Whatever- the word rainbow is going to come out of his mouth at least 17 more times." By the time they got to the check-out counter, Connor was at eight. By the time they got home, he was at twelve. And by the time he rushed in and breathlessly told me the story about how he was denied the rainbow-colored Goldfish, he was at 17 and Mom and Shannon were absolutely hysterical. Eventually they were able to compose themselves and tell us what was so funny. (This was also a good opportunity for me to step back and realize that sometimes when Connor is annoying the hell out of me, it could be entertaining if I would just let it.)


I just put Shannon on a plane, and the only reason I'm not crying is because I know he'll be back in about six weeks, and he'll have Carrie with him too. I already can't wait! See you in December!