The most fun ever

Ask Kate if she wants to go with you to a bouncy castle sometime. You'll make a new best friend, if you take her. Last night was a promotion party/first Friday at the club, and they had four bouncy castles/slides for the, ahem, kids. We arrived and, after seeing what fun everyone was having, Kate wanted nothing to do with dinner. I hefted her up onto the obstacle course castle and after some trepidation, she tentatively started bouncing. Not long after jumping on the first one, she wanted to go up the big slide. I went up with her, because it was pretty steep, and we went down together. After that, she was all over it, by herself. She held up the line occasionally, but climbed it fine on her own, and loved coming down the big slide.

Claire spent a lot of time in her stroller at first, because Tim wasn't there yet. After about an hour of wondering where he was, his squadron commander saw me and told me I was lucky I wasn't there alone. I looked at him for a long time, trying to figure out what exactly he meant. I was there alone. I finally asked him to explain, and he said that Tim had lost an engine and had to make an emergency landing at Gila Bend. I suddenly felt bad for the slightly testy message I had just left for him on his cell phone, asking where he was. He showed up about an hour later, and Kate showed him that she could climb the big slide and go down by herself. It was a somewhat hectic night, with me losing Kate twice while I was either getting food or taking Claire down the slide, and one of those times I felt the rapid heartbeat-where-is-my-child franticness that comes when you realize you don't know where they are. But I found her (on a bouncy castle, of course), and all turned out well.