This past weekend we were lucky with beautiful weather and the company of our amazing friends. They have become our best friends throughout the past four years — they are there for us through thick and thin and have left us feeling humble, grateful, and continuously entertained, ha! 
We let the kids stay up extra late to catch fireflies and run amok in our yard while we all stalled, wanting the night to last longer but seeing that it would, like all things, have to come to an end at some point. They roasted marshmallows and played ball, chased each other and came up with hair-brained schemes like they always do (imagine clotheslining each other with the swing tied to a jump rope while one of them swung from it)… those kids can hang pretty tough! 
It felt like summer, like the real, genuine thing. Something about the fireflies and the marshmallows made it official! 
Brent, aka the pied piper, made me truly appreciate the gentle yet physical way good fathers can be — both he and Andrew make me marvel at the way fathers engage kids like no one else can. There is a give-and-take, a balance that is magical when obtained, and the joy their children feel is palpable. It almost brought tears to my eyes! 
Happy Father’s Day to those dads who bring it all and then some.
Great photos! And do you want to hear something crazy?! I’ve never seen fireflies in real life. We just don’t seem to have them here in Utah!
There was an article last week in the Wall Street journal about dads and how their interactions through rough-housing and such is so instrumental to a child’s development. Of course I can’t remember the specifics but it made me appreciate even more the way Lee plays with Alice.
I seriously cannot believe that Emil is this whole little boy child. It feels like just yesterday that he was a baby, and now he is becoming such a character! I always love when you include highlights with your friends. I never take pictures when we do stuff with friends, in part because I am preoccupied and in part because the vast majority don’t know about my blog… and it seems odd that I wouldn’t take photos just because they won’t be blogged, but it is a strange incentive, isn’t it? Happy that you guys had such a great father’s day celebration, hurray for all of the good pop’s!