Due to the upcoming Easter holiday, the boys didn’t have any activities yesterday or today. Instead, we spent Thursday morning / afternoon with friends and had a super fun, super long play date! Lisa suggested making cookies, brought the dough, rolled them out, cut them with Aiden (the other boys were far too busy to help), made this incredible frosting and then we all decorated them after lunch. I am honestly not a huge sugar cookie fan and I am HOOKED on these – amazing cookies!! By the way, while Lisa was getting the cookies in order, Laura was making us moms a spinach, goat cheese and mushroom egg scramble. Seriously – is it any wonder why I love my friends?! They come and cook for us! ;)

After our play date, there was more and more and more playing with the kids in the neighborhood. They were up and down the row of houses, but settled here for a while. At one point I had 7 of them running around, but it was the kind of afternoon where they were all getting along and having a great time. I’ll have 20 kids over if they are all happy and not fighting! I finally called it a day around 5 and planted my 3 (pretty exhausted and somewhat emotional) children in front of a movie with cold pizza…yes, it was left over from lunch…pizza twice in one day is either a. bad-mom laziness or b. coolest-mom-ever move. I vote b. The boys, who had built a fort earlier in the week for TV watching, requested another. Having just picked all the couch cushions off the floor from the afternoon playing, I went the lazy route…nothing at all like the masterpiece once created by Brian for a movie night – see pics below.

Cookie decorating (more like slap on some frosting and eat it all up!) After the kids had a turn, me, Lisa and Laura did our best to make the remaining cookies “cute” while they went back to playing outside.

Brady: licking sprinkles off his hand – yum! While I’m here, let me just reiterate that Brady prefers to be in pajamas (mismatched ideally) at all times. These PJs are not actually the ones he slept in the previous night. These are his day-wear pajamas, selected after his morning bath.

Aiden: the super cookie helper! Lisa gave him first dibs on decorating since he perched himself on the counter at her side the entire time she was cutting the shapes out. This is actually his second round.

He’s good, but not that good. I think Laura frosted this one for him so he could just add the sprinkles.

Now on to the “main” topic of discussion here (yes…that did take a long time coming!) Here is the fort that daddy made the boys back in like February for movie night. It’s got sleeping bags, multiple blankets, clips, laundry pins, at least 4 dining room chairs and room to breath:

Here is what I made: 2 chairs with a blanket clipped on either side. Really more of an awning than a fort, but they were happy. I mean we know the clear winner of fort building…me…cause it’s so much less to clean up afterwards - ha!