Friends

For the second day in a row, we went to Wrightsville Beach Park. Yesterday, it's where we ate lunch on Chase's field trip. Today, it was Emma's birthday party. Emma and Claire were in the same 3 year old preschool class and had dance class together last year. While their personalities are complete opposites... they get along SO well. So Chase, Claire, Henri and I spent a few hours at the park playing. Henri loved the slides and climbing up these "monkey bar" looking steps... which made me so nervous! Claire and Chase spent the entire time running around with the other kids at the party. At one point, I overheard Chase saying, "You ever hear of Chicken Chase? That's me." We call him that from time to time, but I never realized he liked it so much or thought it was THAT cool. At the end of the party, I pushed... OK, ran under the swings of Emma, Henri and Claire. Kids LOVE that! Shortly before we left, Claire was trying to get across this thing... it was like monkey bars, but instead of a bunch of bars it was one long bar that you were supposed to hang and go across... or do pull-ups... I'm not quite sure of its purpose to be honest. Well, first time she fell it was funny. The next time... not so much. She was crying so bad that I thought she had either broken or sprang her right foot. She was in so much pain that when I asked her if she wanted to go to Chick-fil-a... she said "no"!! We ended up going through the drive-thru and going home (as Claire requested). Luckily, Aaron checked it out and it's not as bad as the Chick-fil-a comment would have made it seem!! Thank goodness!!

After lunch, Claire laid around for awhile. Then the kids all went upstairs to play. I was sitting down doing a puzzle and there was a knock at the door. It was a neighbor from down the street with her little girl (Claire's age). She wanted to know if Claire could come down and play with her because both of her older sisters had friends over. Claire was super shy at first, BUT... after showing them her chickens and pets and me letting her know that I would be right down to check on her... she hopped on her bike and rode down the street with them to their house. Now, this is a momentous occasion for Claire because she has never been anywhere without me, Aaron, or her brothers... always has at least one of her family with her. She had a lot of fun and asked if she could invite "Abby" to her birthday party. Claire made a new friend.