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.