Backyard

Okay, I didn't actually sit on this.  I had every intention of doing so -- I drove 40 miles to my uncle's house to get this bench, another like it, and a picnic table to go in between them, loaded it on the borrowed school truck, just me and Archimedes, and drove 40 miles back.  Max and Jonah were there to help unloading.

All of this for the graduation picnic / pot luck.  Then -- rain.  Which raised the question, can you have a picnic indoors?  It seems that you can have a picnic outdoors that's just burgers and such, but served with informal seating, maybe a picnic table.  If you have a picnic inside, however, you need a blanket on the floor.  Overcompensation, I suppose.

Big turnout, despite the weather.  Kids, parents, siblings, could have been 30 people, could have been 50.  Several stayed overnight -- I'm not exactly sure which ones, because some were gone when I woke up.

At some point in our kids' lives, play-dates switched from being parent-planned to being kid-planned.  At this point, Emma regularly has sleepovers (both home and away) where we never communicate with the other parents.  This is either (a) trusting or (b) foolish.  In the television comedies, this is how each parent thinks the kids are at the other's house, and instead they're at a concert in Philadelphia or Cleveland or somewhere.  I think this was the plot of about 7 Cosby shows, one for each kid.

We're okay for now, I think, because they're too young to drive.  Or perhaps she's been to many concerts without getting caught.  Sometimes, life doesn't imitate art.