Friends

Yesterday our plan was to take the kids to Magic Waters, just like we did last summer.  It's a pretty cool water park about 5-10 minutes from Todd's parent's house.  It has a nice kid area and wave pool and Brett loves to go down the tube slides with one of us.  Kate wasn't as crazy about it last year, but now she's a year older.  Then we realized that the US Women's soccer team was playing at the same time that we had planned on going, so that was the end of that plan.  In all honesty, after all of the traveling and business of the last several days, it was kind of nice to have a bum day and let the kids just play.  Once the game was over, we took the kids to see Cars 2 in the theater - a big deal seeing as how we very rarely take our kids to the movies.  Brett absolutely loved it and Kate fell asleep at the end.  If you ask me, it was just ok - definitely not as good or as kid-friendly as the first one.  Considering that Brett was completely glued to the first Cars movie at 19 months old (he got it for Christmas from Aunt Erin), there is no possible way that an 18 month old would get this movie.  In fact, I think that most of it was over their heads - the whole spy concept was very James Bond-like.

Anyway, after the movie, we came home and let the kids rest for awhile until our friends came over.  Kerry and Manuel (along with Jon who lives on the West Coast and Jeff who lives 2 hours south of here) have all been friends since grade school.  Anytime we come into town for any reason, we try to get together with everyone.  Kerry and Manuel's wives were both working last night, so we told them to bring their kids and we'd order dinner here for everyone.  It worked out perfectly... there is an Italian restaurant here called Lino's that Todd loves and requests every time we're here, so that's what we got for everyone.  Their salad is de-li-cious!!  I could eat an entire plate, or two, of this salad and be perfectly content!   The kids all played well together, even with their ages as spread out as they are - Kerry has two girls that are almost 9 and almost 7, our kids are 5 and almost 4, and Manuel's kids are 2.5 and 14 months old, but the big kids looked out for the little kids and everyone had a good time!

Gabby showing us how she swings on the bar

Abree showing the little kids how it's done!

Layla did not want her picture taken, but I got it :)

Sweet girl... she even got to swing in a big kid swing!

Kate enjoyed being pushed by Abree and Brett just ran hard!

Weeeeeee!

Cutie Patootie Lucas - funniest kid ever!

The Dads and Kids