Kidstime and Frydaze

Last weekend, we managed to get Hannah out of the house for some fun with other kiddos. Saturday morning, she had a play-date with Cameron, the little boy of one of Vivian's co-workers who met Hannah over a year ago to "shake hands and touch feet."

That evening, Dennis had a bunch of us over to his new house to pretend to watch Cars II in the other room as the grown-ups had red popcorn and shrimp in the kitchen, chatting about such things as the difference between rolled oats and steel cut oats. On Sunday, Vivian and I played babysitter to Jake and Samantha. There were plenty of toys all over the house for the kids to get into, but they all seemed to enjoy the big "toy" in the basement with all the keys. Anything that makes that much noise and seats three has got to be the best toy in the house.

 

On Friday night, our rag-tag crew of mutual friends showed up at St. John Vianney's for their Friday night fish fry, a tradition we've been carrying on since 2009. Of course, we initially picked this particular church because the line was unbelievably short (in contrast to the horror that is Mary Our Queen, et cetera). Word must have gotten out, because every year the line has become more insane, this year wrapping around the entryway about four or five times and turning into a jumbled mess of lent-practicing Catholic mayhem. The crowd was so massive that it somehow swallowed Dan Wondra without a trace, but we were fortunate not to have any other causalities. It was still fun to hang out with our noisy friends as we spent over an hour shuffling our way to the front of the line. We were quite ready to binge on macaroni, pancakes, grilled cheese, and (of course) fish once we got there. The fried carbs were enough to turn us into blobs by the end of the night who could barely "bah bah bah" along with Sweet Caroline (requested specifically by Vivian). Good times never seemed so good.