FURLOUGH FUNDAY

We spontaneously decided this morning that Sophie and the kids would come over for a play date, and that Will would come hang with us for a couple hours while Christina and Lauren ran some birthday party errands. James and Cora were so happy that their friends were coming over that they ran and hid (hide and seek, featuring very loud and short-lived hiding, is very popular in our house right now)...

(A little box spinning to start the day...)

After some Lego play and donut eating (don't be too jealous, but my friends bring me donuts, giant boxes of donuts), we went out side with freshly refilled coffees to watch the kids ride bikes. The four of them are getting crazy fast (including Cora!), but they managed to avoid knocking Leo over (though Cora wasn't so lucky and took a couple big spills, one at the hand of her unassuming brother).

When Leo tired of the lawnmowers, he brought out the truck (of course). Little big man is almost two, can you believe it?...

When the bikes and trucks were exhausted, we went down the hill to the play set. I was on high alert for snakes (we've had two cottonmouths in the yard in the past month, and Jay spotted another unidentified snake last night), and while I didn't see any in the "usual" spots, I did find a banded water snake down near the fire pit. So I put our fancy (and expensive, yet "totally worth it") snake stick to use and chucked that thing down the ravine. Sure, it will be back, but it's not poisonous and at least it wasn't sitting there while the kids were playing. (And mom, the cottonmouths were disposed of, so don't stress. Sorry to the snake-lovers reading this. We love them too, but we can't have poisonous snakes in our backyard with little kids around.)

Then finally, when the mosquitoes got on our nerves and Cora's meltdowns became too frequent, we knew it was time to go inside and fix lunch. So we built the kids a fort and set them up with some episodes of My Little Ponies while we prepped the food. We hadn't done a fort in a while, so my guess is that it will stay up all weekend long while the kids (and we) enjoy it.

The kids never napped, but we had a good afternoon just hanging out and watching shows and reading books and building puzzles. Then we convinced Jay to take us out for Mexican food and FROYO. Never disappoints. Though the sugar crash, missed nap/overtired crankiness of Cora at bedtime was a bit much, so perhaps post-dinner ice cream isn't the best idea...

Happy weekend folks! We've got plans for a long run in the rain (for me, fingers crossed that it's just rain and not a thunderstorm when I wake up tomorrow) and a birthday party tomorrow. Should be a good day!