Beth and I took the kids to Fort Wayne today to see "Cars." We had wanted to take Alex especially since he already knows and loves Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater. He loved it! He was so excited to see it. Missy, however, is too young for movies. We had a hunch but took her anyway. We were worried about them staying in their seats for the whole show, but at least Alex did pretty well. The previews went on way too long, though. They were all loud, flashy, in your face, and Alex kept saying he didn't want to see those movies and could we go home. But after the movie started he settled down for a while. We did have to do some walking out with both of them. About halfway through the movie Alex got so restless Beth took him out to the lobby, and Missy wasn't far behind. We almost took them home but Alex ran around the lobby for a few minutes, went potty, and then he went back in and settled down and watched the rest just fine. I held Missy the entire rest of the time just inside the walkway to the auditorium because she would not settle down at all. There were some other kids there that were too young too. Anyway, I enjoyed the movie even more than the kids. That's a definite owner as soon as it's out on video.

We just spent the weekend with my old friends Dan and PeeJ and their families. Dan was on the way to Chicago to visit family and came through Warsaw on Saturday. Since he was coming here, PeeJ and his family came up here from Indy. It was the first time we had all been together since Dan and Julie's wedding almost 10 years ago. Alex was all excited for a few days in advance about all the kids coming to play with him, but the 3 Hasenwinkel boys and the 2 Hinton girls kind of intimidated him. He didn't want anyone to play with his toys, and when we made him share his toys he just went inside. He felt kind of overwhelmed. Dan and his family stayed overnight; PJ's stayed in a motel nearby. Unfortunately we didn't see much of Roma and the girls because Bella was getting sick, so Roma took them to their room just after dinner. Peej came back later to visit with all of us. Dan's oldest boy is scary brilliant. He is 4 1/2, and taught himself how to play chess. He found a sudoku book of mine in the house and asked if he could do some. We were looking at a puzzle together and I said something like "so this box can be a 4 or a 7..." and he replied something like "no, it can't be a 7 because of this box over here..." so I got schooled on sudoku by a 4-year-old.