Transformations #25

This weekend my parents and my nephew visited us.  They picked a brutally hot and humid weekend to come, but overall we had a great time.

You idiot!  You shot my hand off!

My nephew Dustin is a neat kid.  His dad - my brother Ben - and I aren't cut from the same cloth, but in many ways Dustin's acorn fell closer to my tree than to Ben's.  One of our common interests is a passion for setting up forts from scrap blocks of wood, filling them with little plastic army men, and shooting them with Nerf dart guns.  OK, this may be more of a thing I'm into, but Dustin certainly enjoyed it while he was here.  Even if he couldn't beat me.

Dustin lives on a farm and hasn't a chance lately to resupply his stock of army men (there are many reasons why a boy's supply of them can dwindle).  We had some time on Saturday, so I took him to Toys R Us to see what they had in stock.

Dustin was my very first nephew; the trailblazer.  I remember when he was just a wee babe, and I'm amazed at how he's grown up so fast.  I rarely get the chance to see him nowadays - once a year, at most.  So it was a neat opportunity to spend some time shopping with him, and to get to know each other just a little bit better.  It's a reminder that there's more to my family than just my family.
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