I always look forward to the day we get to spend with my friend, Jennifer, and her family. We’ve been friends for 25 years and I love that our husbands get along and have things they have in common and our kids play well together.
We met at Oops Alley to start our fun day. Everyone bowled except me. I do not enjoy bowling, but I do like taking pictures so I was the official photographer. The big kids, Rich, Jen, Dan and Cassidy (their oldest daughter), bowled on one lane and the little kids bowled on another. It’s fun to watch everyone’s personalities come out in their bowling. Allie and Brody have a lot in common. They both bowled with gusto, half rolling, flinging, throwing their balls down the lane. Allie would stand and cheer for her ball. Brody was the winner of the kids. Jaelyn was not so into bowling. She was a little aloof, at least I think that’s a good word to describe her. She’d carry her ball up, throw it down the lane and then walk away without ever looking back. I think she lost. It might have been her mood though. She’s been waking up at 5 and then waking everyone else up. Bad sleep begets bad sleep which begets surly, contrary behavior. She’s been a real toot. Back to bowling… Caden is the baby of the group and he loved being babied by the big kids. Delaney, 11, was especially good at getting him the ball stand and helping him. He figured out if he got a really heavy ball, he could push it and make it go really fast down the lane. It was a lot of fun.
Next we headed to Arcadia to Mill to hunt for a geocache. I’m not sure if we started Rich on geocaching or if he discovered it himself, but he and Dan have become big geocachers (is that a word?). Anyway, if you live in Pensacola, this is a wonderful area for hiking or walking. We spent part of our time on a wooden boardwalk and the rest on a crazy, root covered, wooded path…well except for the sand bowl we found that had paths weaving all through it. Which way did we come in??? We managed to find the first part of the cache, but try as we did, we never located the second part. I’m not sure how much time we spent wandering, but by the end, I was carrying Allie on my back and the rest of my kids were complaining. It was Sonic slushie time.
The evening plan was to drop the kids off at Joan’s for a sleep over. When we got there, Caden got hurt playing rough with his cousin Caleb and that was all she’s wrote. He hung on to me and said he wasn’t staying. We took him back to Baba and Grandpa’s house for pizza and more tent building with Nick.
Rich, Jen, Dan and I had dinner at McGuire’s. The last time the four of us were there was in college before going to the Saenger Theater to see the Wizard of Oz. Dinner was amazing and so was the company. We hadn’t planned on what to do after dinner so Dan suggested finding a geocache that was nearby. 1 turned into 5 night time hunts. Dan came prepared with a new $30 flashlight (it’s the subject of contention at my house so I needed to include the price). It must be the Army training because I don’t think we was ever a Boy scout. Rich and I used the light from Iphones and Jennifer eventually found one of the kids’ DSs to use as her light source. We found caches near an old basketball court, on the bayfront in a restoration area and we found a quarter exchange in front of a downtown business. Our favorite finds were at a playground in this really ritzy neighborhood and in a downtown parking garage. Well, it wasn’t in the parking garage, it was hanging from a rope down the outside wall of the parking garage.
We finished our night off with Krispee Kreme (spelled wrong on purpose) as usual. It was an awesome day with amazing lifelong friends.
