So tonight I was going through iPhoto looking to cull some images that weren’t useful and hopefully post a new update to the Cota family album. During this exercise, I came across this picture and, after a brief moment of “What the…”, I remembered the context.

We had gone down the street to a neighbor’s house for dinner. Since they are originally from Portugal and Italy (it must be some sort of custom or something) there seemed to be no shortage of wine at any given time. This photo was taken with my iPhone, sometime around midnight, and doesn’t really begin to describe the scene.

Well, at some point, Char looks at me and says, “You know, we really should be getting home.” I, of course, agreed. So, we gathered up the kids…

Yes, I meant that; and no, it’s not a typo. The kids had been playing pretty well up to this point, so we gathered them up, put them on their bicycles and…

What? Oh, yes. You heard that correctly, too. Since we just lived down the street, we decided to walk down. The kids chose to ride their bikes. So we loaded everyone up and headed back up the street. Laughing, of course, because by now it’s 2am and we have two kids riding their bikes up the street on training wheels. This is not exactly a stealthy way to get anywhere, much less up a bumpy blacktop road in the middle of the night.

But in the end, I’d do it again. (And, in fact, I think we may have.) Because this– heading home at two in the morning with kids in tow and laughter following– is what neighborhoods are meant to be.