A great Friday evening

Last Friday, we got to have a sleepover with Gabe & Benny (Dan & my nephews) and we knew without a doubt that we were going to light up our firepit (like we had done the previous Friday night, when we had a BLAST with the Bolich family!) We are going to turn it into a Friday night tradition in our house this summer :-)
With dinner in our bellies, we head out to the background: Gabe and Ben are gun-hoe and ready to help Uncle Danny find small sticks in the yard to use as kindling to start the fire. Watching those three work together just warms my heart! It totally reminded me of this one time at the Eckenrode family cabin in West Virginia (Ben was prolly only like 3 or 4), and we were going to make a fire for s'mores. Ben asked in all seriousness says "Are womens allowed to make fire?" LMAO
The fire is ready for s'mores, Dan announces

 Gabe & Benny

 Benny & Maddy (she was suppose to be helping him hold the roasting stick cause he kept letting the marshmallow touch the wood and then lighting it on fire)

 Dan & Rocca

Maddy was like "Oh, Mom, quick, take my picture!"

 "Here Ben, try mine" (the marshmallow had been burnt)

this picture is seriously too cute and extremely accurate at displaying their personalities LOL

Then after the s'mores were roasted and eaten, it was time to play. The fire was forgotten for the time being and our backyard turned into a gymnasium of sorts

twirling Ben around with the greatest of ease

oops, forgot that Gabe weighs just a little bit more than Ben

I described this one as a FAIL! haha

he was walking up her legs then flipping over

After Maddy's arms felt like they were gonna fall out, they played this zombie game. Don't know the entire story, but the jist was Ben died of cancer, Maddy tried to bring him back to life but  it didn't work, so Gabe bit him and turned him into a zombie haha I simply adore their imaginations :-) Oh, and somehow Rocca was Maddy's secretary (I guarantee Maddy never got any of her phone messages! LOL)

The evening ended with a episode of Mythbusters, brushing teeth, and crawling into Maddy's bed for a good night's sleep :-)

Saturday morning, Ben and I made cookie bar brownies that had reese's peanut butter cups in the inside (thank you Pampered Chef for your brownie pan!) and Ben even cracked all the eggs we needed for the recipe! I was SUPER impressed :-)

I suppose the only down side to the entire adventure was now all three kids have poison from one of the trees in the backyard while playing Friday night even though they got showers immediately once they came inside. Ironically, Maddy told the two boys not to touch the pine trees cause their was poison on the trunks and yet, she has posion the worst out of the three of them! Go figure :-P