Chow-da Down!

Friday evening was my company's annual Chowda Cook off. Yes, I know it is spelled chowder. But as I have had it beaten into my head explained to me numerous times, the rules of grammar do not apply here in glorious New England! I originally RSVP'd with my hubby as a guest, but he was feeling a tad bit under the weather, so I didn't miss a beat and called up Liz instead! Liz used to work with me and I knew from the plethora of bouncy house type structures going up in our parking lot it would be perfect to get Natey and Tommy together for some fun! They wasted no time getting into the action. As soon as we walked in the gate we made a beeline for the inflatables section.

There was the throw-the-soccer ball-through-a-hole game. They couldn't throw it very far, but it didn't really stop them from trying!
There was a 2 story humongous slide that looked like a pirate ship being sunk by a giant octopus. Now that I look at it again, it is rather phallic. I got a nice burn on my foot from sliding down it with Nate and fought my claustrophobia to scale the enclosed "stairs" inside. Needless to say, we moved on after one ride down this beast.

The boys spent the better part of an hour discovering all of the bouncy activities before we decided a dinner break was in order.

The theme for the cook off this year was board games. My friend Holly was a part of the "Mouse Trap" team. Natey wasn't quite sure what to make of her in this get-up, but he was interested in trying it out for himself!

We sat the boys down for, what can only loosely be termed, dinner. After some cold hot dogs, untouched nasty mac n cheese, sour cream and onion chips, 2 juice boxes apiece and a bite or 2 of cookie, we moved on to the chowder tasting and booth exploration!

The boys had a great time at the Hungry Hungry Hippos Booth! They played a couple of games and "posed" in the cut outs. It only took me 6 pictures and sadly this one is the best of them both. Why can't toddlers look at the camera at the same time? Oh well!

A few more booths, chowder for us moms, a couple of suckers and twizzlers for the boys later and we took a break for even more sugar! Yes, we hit the free ice cream truck for some Twix ice cream (me, Liz & Tommy) and some frozen lemonade for Natey. I am pretty sure this night marks the highest sweets intake for my boy in his short 2 years of life!

Oh, what? You're tired of looking at pictures of our cuter than life boys? Ok, we did manage to get one of the 2 of us...and only because I decided we'd be bad bloggers if we didn't get at least 1! Ha!

We had a great time and I was kinda glad Aaron wimped out (sorry honey). We came, we played, we ate and we ate...which is more than I can say for last year's disastrous episode!!!