Hosting Our First Play Date

Thankfully, Karen and I have established some friendships with the parents of Owen's two current favorite friends. Collin and Quinn are his best buds at daycare and will be attending his same school for kindergarten as well. On top of that, they are going to be in the same soccer league. According to all the reports we get from school, they are a pretty powerful trio of comrades; heads always together giggling, planning, and imagining adventuresome scenarios for their play. Logan is in the same daycare class as Collin's little sister Payton and they are simpatico as well.

Along with the parental friendship has come an agreement (thank you to Karen and the other mothers for coordinating this!). We'll watch all of the kids one day if you do the same on another. K and I were psyched because it is a way for us to finally get a date night/day now and then without the need of a babysitter. Since we hadn't found a sitter in the new digs yet, this was pretty awesome. We dropped the boys off for a night of fun at Collin's parents not long ago and had one of our first dinners out without the boys in years. Of course, the only catch to the plan is that we agreed to host everyone's kids at some time at our house.

The big day everyone came over was March 8. We got Collin and his little sister Payton and Quinn and his older brother Thomas. Thankfully, Thomas isn't so much older that he couldn't have a good time doing most of the same things the younger boys were doing.

Anyway, it was a loud and rambunctious four hours. Shrieking, running, laughing, giggling, crying, fighting ... Repeat. Then repeat again. One of the best things we had going for us was that after weeks of bone chilling cold, we were finally having seasonable temperatures (little did we know that we were beginning a rapid thaw that would melt 50%+ of our snow in just a few days). The 4 - 5' ridge of snow that surrounded our house since I shoveled off the roof became the perfect play project for the boys. A Frozen Fortress. They enlarged Owen's pre-existing snow cave and completed 90% of a separate snow tunnel that shot straight through the snow wall outside our kitchen. We got a few runs in on the sledding hill too. Great way to burn off some energy and work up an appetite.