Kraby Family: thirty years

My lifelong friend, Brooke, came to visit us recently with her family. She and her husband, Adam, have three kids: Kiersten, 3 1/2, Vaughn, 1 1/2, and Bennett, 2 months. Sounds a little like our house, right?! Their visit was so much fun! The kids played and the grown-ups talked and relaxed. Think of that - six kids under four in our house! Crazy! It was a good crazy, though. It took a while for Lauren and Kiersten to warm up to each other, but once they did, they were so cute! I recall them playing "butterflies" where Kiersten was running around calling Lauren "mama butterfly". Josh and Vaughn were loud boys together. Logan was a little cranky, so he napped a lot of the time and Bennett, well, he slept and ate, slept and ate, slept and ate. You get the picture.

I was amazed watching all the kids play together. You see, Brooke and I were 3 years old when her family moved to the neighborhood and her house was two houses away from mine. So, we've been friends for thirty years!! We used to call ourselves "salt and pepper" because Brooke had blonde hair (salt) and I had brown hair (pepper). Sure, we spent our fair share of time fighting over who got to be Daisy Duke, who liked McDonald's better, who got to sing the Michael Jackson part to "The Girl is Mine" (and who got stuck singing Paul McCartney), and a thousand other things. But, we also spent an entire childhood creating memories that were great like walking to Ankeny's or the A & W, playing soccer, kickball and frisbee, drawing on the sidewalk with chalk, building snowforts, playing grocery store, singing along to my records, and many, many more things. I think that we both want for our own kids what we had: lasting friendships and a loving, safe neighborhood.

To see our children all play together was really quite a site!

And Brooke and Adam were such troopers. They packed up their whole family to come to Minnesota from Chicago to visit family and friends with their crazy crew and get this - NO dvd player in their car!! They are crazy!!! : )

We miss you and hopefully we will see you soon for playdate number two!