TBnJ

Yesterday afternoon, we had three other families of friends come over to play in the front yard. At the height of the party, there were nine kids happily running around, ages 7.75, 7.75, 7, 5, 5, 4.5, 3, 22m, and 21m. Despite such a large group of kids, it was amazingly peaceful. There was only one meltdown by the youngest, and that was as they were leaving. There were a few other scuffles over toys (all involving B...), but they were easily resolved. The parents got to spend the vast majority of the time just sitting in folding chairs on the driveway and talking. Really, we couldn't have asked for a better playdate.

We emptied 90% of the toys in the garage on to the driveway and just let the kids have at. It looked like a toy tornado hit the yard by the end as they scattered things from one end of the yard to the other. They had out jump ropes, plastic baseballs, inflatable balls, bikes, trikes, scooters, a pogo stick, frisbees, water toys, hula hoops, nets, buckets, shovels, toy cars, and more. There was so much on the driveway that the three oldest kids headed over to the neighbors' driveway for a while to jump rope because there just wasn't room to do it safely on ours. At another point, it was like rush hour traffic on the sidewalk because so many kids had moving vehicles.

The seven year olds all had fun climbing the redbud tree (above). The four year old also successfully conquered it, but she didn't go very high. She just got in it. She tried to help her younger brother into the tree, but he wasn't so certain about that concept.

At the end of the gathering, the seven year olds came up with the great idea of tossing the hula hoops as far into the air as they could while standing under the trees. They managed to get one stuck in the maple tree. At left, Daddy-o is throwing a bouncing sit ball (like this one) up in to the tree to knock down the hula hoop. The kids continued to throw the hula hoops upwards and even though they "weren't trying" to get the hoops stuck in the tree, amazingly they got both of them stuck back up there for Daddy-o to knock down again. Fortunately, Daddy-o was able to easily knock them down.

We definitely plan on hanging out in the yard again with friends. It was really fun.

Labels: around the house