A good time was had by all

At least I'm willing to believe that's true. Everyone seemed to have a good time at the work party, so who am I to question their authenticity? Sophia was up until 11:30. There, I just said it. One thing I had not anticipated was that other children have much later bedtimes than she does. There were three other kids present until 11:30, and it would have been impossible to put Sophia to bed while they were there. Of course there were other options for us, but honestly, she was having far too much fun! She wouldn't leave my side for about 40 minutes around 8:00 (her usual bedtime), but by 8:45, she didn't want anything to do with being held. That was partly due to the fact that she fell in love with a boy. Yep. At the tender age of 21 months, Sophia fell hard. His name is Jim. He's 3 1/2 with blond curly hair to be a near perfect match to Sophia's. The feeling was clearly mutual. They just provided the cutest show of chasing, hugging, kissing and performing for each other. Every time Sophia got out of sight, Jim would run to his mom and say, "Mommy! Where is Sophia?!" with all the urgency he could muster. She was never hiding too well. We tried to get pictures of the show, but they would skitter away. The best I could get was this shot of Kate (Jim's mom) reading to Sophia with Jim keeping watch.


Anyway, that was just one aspect of the great evening. All of the kids behaved beautifully. There were eight all told. It's pretty impressive to have eight kids in our house and not have anyone go crazy. Erick did a great job keeping the grill going and everyone fed. The adults managed to have some good conversation and enjoy socializing. The evening was intended as a welcome to the firm and (back) to Columbia for our friends the Bacons. That was, I hope, accomplished. So the evening was a complete success.

I didn't take the time to get any photos of the event. I gave all the kids disposable cameras to play with, so that should be interesting... Here is Sophia helping me clean up today.