The Antonio Family: 8/31/08

Friday, September 5, 2008

Mark's Birthday

The second party for Saturday was Mark's 50th Birthday. Mark and Linda are our direct neighbors (now that we've moved). They are also parents to Makayla, the love of Miles' life. As sweet as she can be, she is definitely the bossiest of all the kids, and Miles soaks up every minute of it. He is just slightly infatuated. We headed over to Hooter's on the water and even though it was a drizzly day, it was still nice to watch the boats going in and out of the harbor. I didn't get to take too many pictures at Hooters so here are a few of the ones that came out (it was dark inside).

Miles, Makayla and her friend playing "hand" games

Miles and his "girlfriend"

Table full of of party-goers

Singing Happy Birthday to Mark

Miles and daddy

Funny picture of baby Noah

Emily's Birthday

Our first party of the day on Saturday was Emily's birthday. Miles plays with two boys on our street. They are all only a couple of weeks apart in age and as long as we all stay here, they will grow up together, go to the same school and hopefully all remain friends. One of the little boys is named Andrew and his little sister Emily turned one this week. We were all supposed to go to a huge community pool for the party and swim time, but the weather wasn't having it. So we ended up with just the party and the kids didn't even know they missed anything. It was a lot of fun considering most of the guests were from our neighborhood. It ended up being like a giant indoor block party.

In our neighborhood, it's all about degrees of separation: Dawn is Andrew and Emily's Mom. Chad is her husband. They live on the street perpendicular to ours. George is Chad's dad and also our Realtor for the new house and now our neighbor there as well. Also in attendance was Mark our mortgage broker for our new home purchase who is Dawn and Chad's brother-in-law because he is married to Chad's sister, who had the young boy in the much earlier "Chuck E. Cheese" pictures I posted.

Miles other friend is Tyler. Tyler's mom is Rita. They live on our street as well. I met Rita on Halloween, right after we moved in. We were trick-or-treating with Miles and his Auntie Kristina and Uncle Bryan, when we went to a house down the street from ours where Kristina knew the woman who lived there from working with her at a previous job. Several months later, Miles started playing with Andrew and I found out that Rita is Dawn's good friend and that Tyler and Andrew play together all the time. Now the three boys spend several days or evenings a week together and Rita and I are gym buddies for Zumba. I could go on and on about the relation between this one and that, but of no interest to anyone else so I will stop there for now.

It's a highly social neighborhood where everybody knows each other. They look after each others kids, pets and houses and spend their free time together. It is a great family environment and we are very lucky to have found that, especially while Miles is still so young. Anyway here are some pictures from the party: