Lauren's last day, Jack's first sleepover, and three carseats fit in the back of the isuzu

Very sad, but not all sad, more bittersweet really, but still very sad:

Our time with Lauren has come to an end. Her real job (teaching middle school) is starting up next week, so Friday was her last day nannying for us. We will miss her desperately, but have some travel ahead of us and when we get back Jack will be starting preschool, so that's something exciting to look forward to. And in the meantime, we get Lauren's understudy, her younger sister Clare! So that worked out well. She will be hard to replace, though, and I hope Jack can always remember this year with her. Her parting gift to him was a dragon-- how well does she know this kid? The one animal missing from his menagerie. She also got Sadie the dress she's wearing up there, which she looks just smashing in. I got her... an unframed picture. Um, going to have to try again on that one.

In another major rite of passage, Jack had his first sleepover last night. We were going out to our friend Rebeccah's birthday party and our other friends who were also going were having trouble finding a babysitter so we thought we should just split it and have a slumber party. And having never tried this before, if slumbering didn't actually happen, at least it was the weekend and on somebody's else's watch! But it sounds like they did really well, actually, and we decided we should make this a more regular occurrence for date night swaps. Jack would be very much in favor of that, he could not stop talking about his sleepover with Abby.

And if that wasn't enough, yesterday he got to be reunited with his long lost pal Luca (who's been on vacation for the past month), when we took them to the Lawrence Hall of Science with our brand spanking new membership the grandparents got us last weekend. Jack was excited to show Luca all the dinosaurs and be the experienced one who knew where they all were. I was excited to discover that three car seats fit in the back of the Isuzu, so at least until Sadie moves up to a bigger car seat, we can still take friends places without having to take an extra car or rent a van. Why are car seats so fat? They must be in cahoots with the minivan manufacturers. Anyway, we enjoyed the dinosaurs, as well as the other exhibits featuring flying balls and giant double helices, as well as the spectacular views that are almost reason enough in themselves to become members of this museum. And Jack showed off his best T Rex roar. He's getting quite good at it.

It was a busy weekend. We also had about a billion play dates today, but I have to stop now because I'm getting on a plane tomorrow morning to Texas (where, I have pointed out to Danny no less than a dozen times, it is 105 degrees) to go to the ESA meeting with Sadie. Jack is staying behind with Danny and super-cousin-to-the-rescue Clare, who is moving in for the week to help out with childcare.

What would we do without family?