It's A Small, Small World

The crazy series of puzzle caches in the swamp I wrote about in my last post?  Turns out their creator is a guy who works closely with my husband (in an office an hour-plus away.)  Talk about random.  I've even met him once before but had no idea he was a cacher.  I'm going to have to suck back all of the taking-his-name-in-vain I did last week as I banged my head against the wall!

In other news, it's been a relatively quiet weekend.  I had a few hours of 'time off' yesterday morning and then some good friends came over for dinner yesterday evening.  In one of those serendipitous arrangements that happen all too rarely, the wife was originally my friend, but subsequently the husband has become a real friend of my husband's as well (the two of them run together on weekend mornings.)  The icing on the cake is that the elder two of their three daughters are almost exactly the same ages as my sons (their youngest is two) and the five older kids get along famously and run in a pack when together.   Their family had no sooner walked in the door than the kids were off...hide and seek, swimming and various games.  The four adults, meanwhile, disposed of an entire pitcher of my husband's famous sangria and caught up while sitting under the tent out by the pool...truly the way to spend a summer afternoon!  Dinner was grilled steak with chimichurri sauce (fabulous), rice salad and regular salad, plus good bread for dipping, followed by berries and cake and s'mores made over the new backyard firepit as the sun went down and the back hedge came positively alive with fireflies...it looked like a Christmas light show back there.  All that was missing was the synchronized music, really.

Last week was kind of a gimme for the kids...we're the sort of parents who keep them reading and doing some academic stuff over the summer, but there was no point last week with the grandparents in town and the newness of vacation in full effect.  Today all of them did a bit of work, and we will be starting to figure out the summer routine, since two of the three kids are happiest when there is some sort of structure to our days.  The challenge is getting done what needs to get done while maintaining time for fun and having some adventures too...my annual summer balancing act!