Friends

Will and Rachelle and their kiddos were in town last weekend, so we got extra special playtime with them.  Z (and the littles, too) all LOVE the boys.  They were their first friends, and we saw them all the time.  We miss having them in town...all of us do.

Saturday morning we went to the Butterfly House and the Carousel with Rachelle's and Erin's families.  It was pretty cold out, but we were able to play at the park on the front and tail end of those.  Always good to let children out and RUN, especially when there are so many and it is wintertime :)  And now between us, there are 13 kids 7 and under.  Not surprisingly, we were asked "so what sort of a group is this?".  Um, 3 families?  :)

Saturday afternoon the big boys came over, and Sunday morning we went to church.  We brought the big boys back here after church for a few hours, then they went home (they were all actually staying at Erin's house) so we could all have some quiet for a few hours.  The boys had fun playing in the Lego room, running around downstairs, and doing who knows what else.  All of them played well together, and there are no pictures to document whatever exactly they did.  But there was a lot of laughing, yelling, giggling, screaming, imagining, and talking going on. 
  
On Sunday night we met several of our girlfriends at Monkey Joes (crazy:  9 moms, 29 kids..."only" 26 were there...we're apparently a prolific bunch).  There are no pictures from that escapade.  It went INCREDIBLY well, but there was no time for taking pictures.  My littles all stayed together very well, and Z hung out with the big boys, so everyone was accounted for.  I even got to have some (light and interrupted) conversation...mostly yelling since it was so loud in there.

The big boys came back home with us to watch a movie and spend the night, then Monday morning we went to MoBot (so thankful for that membership gift!!!!)  The boys did pretty well but I could tell that they were getting tired...we had some misbehaving, some crankiness, a few meltdowns...but they handled it pretty well.

I took these pictures in the Climatron and the lens just fogged up...and unfortunately I couldn't just tell them to wait while I made it perfect...so, you get what you get.  And I love this series of pictures, because with that many kids you never know what face some kid will be making! 

Z was incredibly sad to see his friends go.  N asked when they could spend the night again, and when I said that they had to go back to Oklahoma, he offered that we could just give them some more clothes?  Love it.  So grateful to have old friends that are pretty much just family!