An Ideal Evening

Have you ever had one of those days/evenings that was just like some kind of oasis in the dry desert of everyday life? We had one of those last night.

We had a guest for the past two nights as he was passing through town, but we didn't really have any set plans to hang out or go out to dinner or anything. His plans yesterday were to just do some St. Louis sightseeing, and we had no idea when he'd be back for the evening. So we decided to go pick up an assortment of deli meat and cheese, and a couple of "salad" sides, and that way if he was there, we'd have sandwiches, and if he wasn't, but wanted something to eat later, we'd have something in the fridge.

So Rob gets the deli stuff on his way home and I pick up the kids. On the way home, Nicole asks if she can play outside for a while, and I said we needed to have dinner first - then I suggested to her that we could take our sandwiches outside and have a little picnic. When we got home, we saw our neighbors (with two boys that are close to Nicole and Jacob's ages), and went by to say hi. As we were about to part ways for our separate dinners, the mom (Amy) noted that she wasn't sure what they'd throw together yet. Then Nicole announced that we were having a picnic. I know that Rob overbuys when it comes to deli stuff, so I told her they were welcome to join us in the backyard. Graham (the little boy that's Nicole's age) got terribly excited, and Amy said "let me go ask Daddy".

So we went inside, loaded up a laundry basket with all of our sandwich fixin's and some blankets, and by the time we got back outside, Amy and the boys were standing outside with ice cream and cones, and declared that they had dessert, and that Rich was coming along with some more blankets.

The 8 of us just all sat outside and ate and yapped (well, the two older kids ran around and played after stuffing themselves full of little more than Doritios) for over two hours. It was wonderful! It was a little muggy, but it was also windy, so it wasn't that bad. Andrew (our guest) showed up about an hour in, and made a sandwich and joined the party. We probably would have stayed out longer if Graham and Nicole hadn't colored each either from head to toe with sidewalk chalk. So we needed to allocate extra time to hose off the kids before bed.

Anyway, this is not even close to something we'd do normally. But it was so much fun. Our neighbors have been there for three years, but we'd never spent that much time with them at one time. What amuses me most though, is that Andrew has no idea how far from normal last night was, and he probably is leaving our house with some kind of notion that we totally live in "Pleasantville" LOL.