Madura Manor

Daniel & Heidi, us, and Jared & Maryle, in Cozumel, Mexico

This week has been SO unbeatably fun!  First on Thursday, Jared & Maryle came to visit with their two kids--Evan and Holly.  They're our long time friends that we knew before Steve and I were married.  Hooray for them for surviving summer sales with us!  That night we partied hard with them and Daniel & Heidi, reminiscing over those grueling summers and tropical paradise cruises!  We relived videos of Steve, Jared, and Daniel's glory days of being star kareoke singers!  The kids got along SO well--both of their kids are only a few months older than Carter & Addison.

And the 2 biggest HOTWHEELS fanatics meet

Evan & Carter

Then, on Saturday, our other dear friends came to visit for the weekend--Brandi Nielsen and her 3 kids, and her mom.  They were our first friends moving here, and we soon found out that Brandi's husband, Matt, and Steve had a lot of mutual friends from Seattle--Steve's mission and Matt's hometown.  They're SO fun to play games--THEY taught us Hand & Foot! 

 THEY got us into "Lost", and Brandi's been a great friend to talk with and figure things out!

Carter & Matthew, Jr.  

They've always been SUCH good friends, even though Matthew's 2 years older.

Carter making sure Ava "feels welcome" at our house.

So, with both friends, we stayed up WAY too late and laughed WAY too hard.  The laughter hopefully compensated for the calorie intake of food that was WAY too yummy:

• Stuffed Strawberry Frenchtoast, 
• Creamy Italian Chicken, 
• Indonesian Peanut Chicken, 
• Cranberry Pork with Mashed Potatoes, 
• Ice Cream Sandwiches to rival Didi Reese, 
• and of course, Oreos 

So, did I convince you that you should come visit?  WE WOULD LOVE IT!  The Madura Manor is open for business!

On the sadder side, we did all this entertaining amidst Addison's first big illness--a peaked fever of 103, a roseola rash (I hope that's what it was) that broke yesterday, and vomitting on Saturday.  Poor guy!