cherry bowl drive-in...

Well... it was another crazy weekend, with ballet, flag football, playdates (not sure 11 year old boys actually call them that anymore), church, fall musical rehearsal (at church) and Nutcracker auditions (Clara got in again!)... but we survived!

Now on to the Cherry Bowl photos...

After we finished our ice cream, the gates were open!
We really just love this place! It is so much fun and we have such a good time together there.

We picked out our spot...
... in hindsight, it wasn't the best choice. We had lots of spots to choose from, why we picked this one, I'm not really sure. It wasn't bad, but we think we've scouted out a better locale for next summer.

After some initial set-up, the kids ran off to play on the playground at the base of the big screen...
This place has lots of cut-outs to pose with, and they posed with them all...

Alex as a knight, and Clara as "Cindy"...
... that's how Alex referred to her... I didn't realize he was so close with her! :-)

Then to ride the rocking animals that they were entirely too big for...

We went back to our site for awhile...

And then over to pose by the cut-outs by the concession stand...


The kids picked out their treats and Jeff and I got a big bucket of fresh popcorn with real butter.... mmmmmm.

We ran into the owner on our way back to the car and started talking. He's super nice and ended up giving the kids tokens to play miniature golf (and an extra two tokens so they could take us "as their guests"). It was getting close to showtime, so we did a quick nine holes before settling back in. Alex and Clara sat in the back with the hatch open (took us until about halfway through the movie to figure out how to shut the lights on the hatch off, and that was only with the help of google that we did finally get it). Jeff and I sat in chairs right in front of the kids. It was a beautiful night to see Cars 2...
Jeff and I couldn't hear very well so we missed a lot of the movie... next time we think we're going to try bringing a little portable radio so we can pick up the audio on the radio station. We tried using the car radio, but it kept shutting itself off every 15 minutes. And we didn't feel like googling that to try to figure it out :-)

For the first time, we decided to try the double feature.... it was the last Harry Potter. We had already taken Alex to see it, but we all (except Clara) decided that we wouldn't mind seeing it again. Clara had no desire to see it, so we made her a bed in the back seat and she went to sleep. I climbed in the "trunk" to sit with Alex and Jeff moved his chair to a speaker in an open parking spot. He tried joining us in the "trunk" but it was just a bit too cozy. It was so cool to see again... especially since a storm was blowing in that night. It sure helped with the mood of the movie to see lightening off in the distance around us! We all (except Clara) really enjoyed seeing it again. Even if it did mean getting back to our townhome at 1:00am!