This past weekend I took Madeleine and Matthias to Memphis to visit our good friends Brooke and Chad and their two sweet kids. They used to be our neighbors but moved last year to be closer to family. Madeleine and their little girl, Parker, were the best of friends and I think their move was even harder on Madeleine than it was on me. We hopped on a plane for a quick three day trip and it was the best weekend - lots of catching up and laughter.

While we were gone, John and James had an epic boys weekend. They went hiking, played lots of football and ate "men" food (which is basically meat and potatoes with no green vegetables in sight and always ice cream for dessert). They had a blast.

Halloween 2016

For some crazy reason, there was no school for anyone on Halloween. Which means that the kids were up and dressed in their costumes before noon. With a long wait ahead of them.

Thankfully our friends were having a kids party in the middle of the day to try and help entertain them for a couple of hours. There were tons of games and activities for the kids, and of course lots of treats for them!

Poor third kid, I just realized that this is the only picture I took of him on Halloween! He pretty much just hung out in the swing through the whole party and laughed at all the kids running around. And because of all the craziness of the party, he slept through most of trick or treating and then helped John pass out candy for the rest of it. We were going to reuse the dragon costume that we had for James, but it was over 80 degrees here and he would have been way too hot.

Madeleine was of course Cinderella (after going through about a dozen ideas before she finally decided) and loved every minute of being a princess.

James was a ninja, a tough and scary ninja.

The kids had so much fun and of course got way too much candy - but I would say yesterday was a definite success!