James and Joe

While both James and Joe were here for the football game, Joe only flew in on the Friday night and had to leave Sunday evening. James arrived earlier in the week and was able to stay until the following Tuesday. I had to work both Wednesday and Thursday, but Kevin was able to take a little time off of work for some quality time with James. They pretty much played video games for those entire two days. They did go suit shopping for Kevin and managed to tear themselves away from Mario Kart to pick me up from work.
James loves cereal so I made sure to have a few different kinds during his stay. The first morning he was here I walked into the kitchen to see him eating his cheerios out of the smallest bowl that we have. For some reason I found this hilarious because he kept having to refill the bowl. I'm laughing now even as I look at this picture. The guys weren't quite as tickled as I was, but I took a picture anyway.
I was off that Friday and James, Kevin, and I ran all of our errands to get ready for the tailgate. We did a Costco, Bevmo, and Walmart run and had to drop stuff off at campus so we could fit all of us in our car the next day. Then it was time to pick up Joe from the airport. He was flying in from Austin, TX where he recently moved for a new job.

We pretty much headed straight to campus and met up with a bunch of friends at the Treehouse to hang out for the evening.

Joe and Kevin.
James and Brian
Later in the evening a guy from a nearby table challenged James to a little arm wrestling match. We all thought James would beat the snot out of this guy, but he was apparently freakishly strong and he lost :(
On Sunday there were more video games to be played. Joe hadn't had a chance and Kevin kept getting mad at him for wanting to be first person on the controller. We all accused Kevin of just wanting to be in control of everything. Kevin claims that he is the only person that knows how to play and manage the main controller. You decide....
After getting everyone showered and cleaned up we finally stopped playing video games and went out for some sushi. It was the middle of the afternoon so we were literally the only people in the restaurant besides the staff.

We ordered a variety of stuff and everything was really really good. Then we decided to order something super hot. The reason for this goes back to a previous visit from James.

A few years ago when James came out we went out to dinner at a really nice sushi place. We decided to order the hottest item on the menu (we think it was called the dragon roll). The waiter looked at us and said "are you sure you want to order that?" "Of course" we foolishly replied. He shook his head and placed our order. As he brought out our roll a little later, all the staff gathered in the corner and began staring at us. The three of us then dug into the dragon roll. Immediately upon taking a bite, our faces turned red, we began sweating profusely, and our water glasses were suddenly empty. Our waiter then asked us in a patronizing tone if the dragon roll was too hot. "Of course not" we replied as we downed our freshly poured glass of water. We drained our new glass of water and left as quickly as possible before we began crying.

I included this picture of James finishing off the spicy sushi mostly because of Joe laughing and the awesome Japanese music playing in the background.




We had a little bit of time left before having to take Joe back to the airport so we thought we would go and play a little laser tag. The wait was a little too long so we stuck with arcade games. I stomped Kevin in air hockey 7-0.
I took several pictures of the boys playing various games. They all pretty much look the same and none of them are smiling since they were so focused on the game.


I had to work again on Monday so James and Kevin headed up to the city for the day. I sent the camera with Kevin, but unsurprisingly not a single picture was taken. They ended up going to a couple of art galleries and had a nice Italian lunch. After picking me up from work we enjoyed James' final evening eating more Italian food and watching a movie.

It was a fantastic week and weekend and I know that Kevin really enjoyed having his brothers in town. It is always a little bit of a bummer when our guests leave, but having them here was wonderful and we can't wait to see them again at the end of the year!