Flamingo Friday

I just woke up at 9:25 to a quiet house. Both Sean and Tate are still sleeping and it's almost 10am now! I'm loving my quiet, alone time and also loving the fact that I got to sleep in too! Usually I have to get up early to be able to have some alone time before Tate wakes up. He must have been really tired!

He played really hard last night. We went to a fun little gathering at our new friends, The Klipsch's house. It was such a great time for the adults and kids alike. They call this gathering "Flamingo Friday". I had no idea what that meant when I received the invitation, so I asked. Apparently, it started when they lived in Chicago on a street with lots of young people. On Fridays, one of the houses would have 2 pink flamingos stuck in it's lawn and everyone on the block would know that meant that Happy Hour was at their house that evening. So then, all the neighbors would gather there for the evening and when everyone left, someone else would take the flamingos to be placed in their lawn for the next week. I love it!

Usually, Flamingo Fridays are only for people right on their street, but they (ever so kindly) extended it out to a few more distant neighbors who they knew in the neighborhood, so lots of people ended up showing up. It was so great to get to meet so many of our neighbors that live only a block or two away.

Two exciting things happened at Flamingo Friday last night...

WE FOUND A BABYSITTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yowzers, this one is HUGE! We've been looking and hoping we would find someone and we are thrilled to have someone to call on if we need to. Yippee!

There was one specific girl who I was chatting with off and on through the night and to make this story as short as possible, turns out that she mentioned knowing some people in Muscatine. Since I grew up there, I happened to throw out a couple of names who I knew also worked for the company she works for. Turns out, those are the people she knew. It gets crazier...so she asked me, "who are your parents???" Immediately after telling her Candi and Larry, her eyes got big and she said, "WHAT?! Tom and Cindy are MY parents!" Um...are you kidding me?! We totally know each other's parents, like pretty well. They both have vacation homes in the same neighborhood down in Florida, my parents went to her wedding, and my mom was even with her mom when she got the call from me that we had been chosen to be the parents for Tate! I've boated with her parents, dined with them, Sean's golfed with them. Crazy small world!!! So they live about 3 blocks from our house and have a daughter who is about 6 weeks younger than Tate and a son who is 2 1/2. They are Hawkeye fans (SCORE!) and just a really fun, nice couple. Can't wait to be able to get together with them and also introduce them to The DeCooks and ALL of us get together to grill and hang out and have the kids play. We may be seeing some of our OWN Flamingo Fridays in our future! Hooray for having the best neighborhood ever! Seriously, I love it here!

So thank you Leslie and Jake for inviting us! We look forward to hosting a Flamingo Friday of our own in the near future!