The weekend whirlwind

Phew! We survived the super busy 36 hour stay in Kansas City! We have been wanting to visit everyone for a while now, and there was finally a weekend without anything extra or an OSU game, so we thought "Why not add a road trip with 2 kids!" Don't worry, the people from the mental hospital came and measured us for our straitjackets already!

We arrived at 10:30 Friday night to spend the night with our friends Kristen and Jay, and put the kids to bed first thing. The schedule for Saturday went something like this:

7:15 - wake up and hustle 4 sleepy Donovans to get ready for a jam-packed day
8:15 - pick up our old neighbor, Joey, so she and Meredith could see each other
8:30 - reflect on how random 5 year old girls are as they giggle in the back seat, saying things like "Did you know I have a raccoon on my pants?" "No, did you know I am doing gymnastics?" and "I wanted to name my little brother Aiden when he was still in my mom's tummy, but my mom and daddy said no because that is your brother's name"
8:45 - meet the Lilak family for breakfast so that Meredith can see her best friend from preschool (We wanted to try to see some of the other friends as well, but they were out of town this weekend...That's you Suzanne!)
9:45 - Matt nearly has a meltdown after having to deal with Nathan at breakfast while I chat with the adults. (A nice and infrequent occurrence for me.) We decide we better move on to the next stop on the KC tour.

10:15 - Arrive at Deanna Rose, wander around looking at everything and wishing OKC had a place like it! Bear gets a kick out of feeding the goats and the girls keep making dinosaur sounds at the animals until I am getting dirty looks from nearby parents. We try to quiet them down with a trip to the playground, where Nathan discovers the joys of the tunnel slide.

Nicole and girls meet us at the playground, Joey's dad picks her up and we do our best to wear out the children, with great success!

12:30- lunchtime at Maloney's, we leave Matt there so that he can meet up with his ERAC friends and head out to try to get the kids to nap.

2:30- Bear discovers that he can jump in the crib at Kristen's house and spends the next 45 minutes testing this new-found skill and laughing. I give up on resting and go outside to help set-up for Kyle's birthday party.

3:30 - party begins, children arrive in droves. Bear spends the whole time pretending to vacuum the floors and moving things around outside. Mere has fun with the other kids, party is deemed a success.

5:00 - head to Maloney's to pick up (drunk and happy) Matty. Get there about 10 minutes late, then stop to make him get me caffeine, since my nap was a no go.

5:45 until we leave town Sunday morning...reach our final destination, relax and have a TERRIFIC time hanging out with my very best friends! I love watching our husbands complete the male ritual of gathering around the grill drinking beer, I love watching our kids play together, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE (!) seeing the girls. Nathan and Lily were so cute together, and Natalia, Dylan and Meredith just jumped right into playing as though they all get together every day.

Sunday morning we had a few more wonderful hours of visiting before we loaded up the car and headed back down to OKC again. The kids were excellent on the drive back down, everyone is tired and we all had a great time. We are looking forward to the possibility of people visiting us and I am once again impressed with how blessed I am in my life to have a wonderful husband, beautiful, healthy, funny children, incredible friends who know me inside and out and love me anyway, and this lovely home in OKC. And, the newly discovered "grown-up" in me (more about her emergence in a future post) has now completely unpacked everything, laundry is underway and the kids are clean and in bed at 7:30 at night.