Two less lonely people in the world...

Last week (as I was missing my husband and dreading the weekend alone), I got a message from my friend Celeste that she wanted to come to Iowa to visit. I was so excited I called her immediately and we started planning. Her husband was also away on rotations and we both wanted some company. She is amazing and braved the 10 hour drive here from Michigan, with 3 kids- including a 7 week old baby. WOW! She totally made my week. Make that my whole month. We had a blast. It had been over a year since I had seen Celeste and her kids, back then we spent nearly every day either running together...

or working together. We had some great times!

This weekend was no exception. Still more great times.

We were so excited to meet little Maddilyn. She has the cutest little face and the best hair! Abbi was especially interested in her and kept crawling over to check her out. Sadly, cute little Maddi made Abbi look like a toddler.

The boys were also sooo excited to see their buddy Cannon. They spent the whole weekend playing with legos and transformers and we hardly heard from them. The older boys stayed up chit chatting until late into the night and somehow weren't even grumpy the next day.

They even included Karlee in the sleepover festivities, and she was such an angel!

We revisited some of our old "stomping grounds" like the Neil Smith trail. Hauling six kids on bikes wasn't quite as relaxing as running the trail used to be, but it was fun all the same.

We also had to hit Panera bread and take it to Dewey park for a picnic.

Somehow I don't have photo documentation of it, but one of the highlights of the weekend was getting a babysitter and going to dinner and shopping.

The weekend wouldn't have been complete without meeting up with some of the old Chapelridge crew. We met up with Megan and Lisa and their kids for an afternoon at the park. As far as parks go, it doesn't get much better than Raccoon River.

What a crew! The kids (minus Logan and Maddi) stopped playing for a minute to have a snack.

We spent all afternoon playing at the park, playing in the sand,

and swimming in the river.

We ended the weekend with a pizza party and (of course) the kids ended up hunting for (and catching) frogs in their pajamas.

This wasn't really part of the festivities, but I had to throw this picture in here because I am certain that I have about the cutest baby in the world and I wanted to share it with all of you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Celeste, Cannon, Karlee and Maddi. We had so much fun visiting with you guys. We had such a good time that Celeste has convinced me to drive to Michigan in November for a visit. (She is going to hold my husband captive as collateral!) We can't wait to see you guys again.