Gourmet Club - 2010 Style

July 10th

It doesn't seem like that long ago that a collection of good friends in Chicago decided to start a little "gourmet club." The concept was that a collection of singles and couples would alternate hosting dinner events in our often not-so-spacious and even not-so-air-conditioned apartments throughout the north side of the city of Chicago. Collectively, we even bought a set of TV trays that we shifted around town for each gathering. Many, many, memories from those Sunday night gatherings.

Fast forward roughly 11 years, and a lot has changed. A lot of weddings, a lot of travel, new houses, moving to new cities, no more TV trays...less frequent get togethers, and uh...a lot of kids.

In fact, 5 of the kids are not even in this picture. Well, the entire crew got together in Madison, WI for two days of fun in the middle of July. We'll do a little run down on the cast of characters, but let the pictures capture a few of the moments from the weekend. We kicked things off with Jed helping Steve prepare some of his famous Cuban sandwiches.

Owen, Anand, Vivek, and Clay passed on the Cubans and opted for the staples in a 4 yr old diet (& 7 yr old diet for Clay)...fruit and mac & cheese.

When they weren't eating, they were burning off some energy on the backyard water park. To keep things in perspective, this water park is bigger than at least 2 or 3 of our apartments 11 years ago.

Isaac did his best to keep up with the bigger boys, but he also found some time to relax with mom Joanna.

Dylan kicked back in the shade after lunch.

The little man, and the newest member of the crew, Jack, had a front row seat for all of the action.

The gathering wasn't all about the kids. Sean, Andy, and Brian look guilty broke away for a little while to explore Jed's other new hobby..."slacklining."

If you haven't heard of this yet, do a quick google search on the Gibbons Slackline. Whatever videos you find on google will falsely represent the types of tricks on hand in Madison. We all worked on simply standing up on the line and trying to work our way to the other end.

Ailey did her best to show up the old guys.

After a change of venue and a lot of naps (some for the kids and some for the dads), we moved on to the evening entertainment. While the adults tried to sit back and relax...

...the kids were busy exploring the toys and bikes and water games at their disposal. Ailey, Owen, Taylor, and Eli made a lot of runs in and out of the house to get water for this little contraption.

Paxton was sporting another war wound throughout the weekend. Our little Miss P always finds a way to keep things interesting.

The band-aid didn't keep her from wheeling her way through the crowd.

I'm not sure how Sarah and others did it, but the kids did manage to sit down for dinner...and especially for ice cream.

As bed time rolled around, we tried a lot of things to settle down the noise and activity, but nothing was more effective than a healthy dose of cartoons.

...and one "enforcer" to oversee the mayhem (Thanks Radhika).Thanks everyone. What a great time. Another memory in the books.