Date Night!

It's official: Cliff and I have been out on a date two weekends in a row! Yep, I know. This kind of thing just doesn't happen in our world very often. It's not that we don't spend time together...it's just that we generally do all of our "going out" stuff with the kids and our "dates" consist of watching a movie or our favorite TV shows together with the kids tucked in bed. (And I kinda like it that way!) So what may you ask prompted two dates on two consecutive Fridays? Movies of course! Last week we went to Pirates 3 with Dave and Leslie and had soooo much fun. The movie theater itself was a little scary, ok a lot scary, but the company and movie and laughs we had made it all worth it. And tonight we saw Ocean's 13. If you're an Ocean's fan you'll like it. If you're not, you probably won't watch it anyways so it doesn't matter. And of course we have to give a huge thank you to Auntie Kizzy for coming to babysit our boys (and Auntie Jenna for being willing if we could ever get our schedules to collide!) We love and appreciate both of you so much!



A few posts ago I mentioned that we were counting sleeps until we went to Raymond....we still are but they have gotten considerably shorter. The new plan is for me and the boys to go home this Sunday (yep, 2 sleeps) and Cliff will follow on Friday. My dad is going to meet us in Calgary and we'll swap vehicles so Cliff isn't walking to work every day. (In case you're wondering it's a 15 minute drive up and down hills so walking would take a lot longer.) We're looking forward to being in Raymond and enjoying the sunshine - at least that's what the weather network is forecasting today.



Rhett has slept through the night almost every day this week....I say this as I'm knocking on wood. I know that there are lots of you moms who are blessed with children who start sleeping through the night as mere babes...my kids are not of that batch. You know when you look at parenting books or those info sheets that you get at the health unit and they give you the kids age and then say that at this age they should be sleeping blank amount of hours? And it's always a range, say from 12 to 16 hours a day. My kids have always been on the low end of that scale, if not under. Apparently they are afraid that they will miss something. However, Rhett seems to have mastered the one nap a day thing and is sleeping much better at night. Please, for my sanity, pray that it will continue! He has also finally cut one of his molars! My poor child has the roughest time with cutting teeth. Zane was hardly ever bothered by them so it's been kind of a sucker punch with Rhett and teething. We have also given up the soother. I say we because we both liked it. I should probably say it was hard and that we had a big strategy in place and all of that....but really I think he just out grew it. I'd noticed for a couple of weeks that he really didn't look for it but would suck on it if I offered it. Then he just started chucking it wherever he wanted and really didn't want it. So, I gathered them all up - yes there were multiples - and I threw them away. And that was that. I got a break on something!



Zane continues to love everything pirate. We went to the farmer's market in Innisfail with Leslie, the kids, and her mom, and I bought him some Usborne books about pirates. He loves them. One of them is kinda a "Where's Waldo" type thing where you have to find a pirate on every page and then there's all these different things for you to find as well. Supposedly there's 1001 things to find in all...and I think we're just over half way there. He's also decided that he likes being artistic again. For awhile he's shown no interest in all of his art stuff (and we have a lot!) but this week we made flowers out of egg cartons, a caterpillar out of egg cartons and he painted some great masterpieces. We've also been preparing for his first talk in primary. I asked the primary president what they wanted out of the Sunbeams and she said if all he wanted to do was get up there and say " I love Jesus" that was good with them. Basically it's just for the experience. So, I came up with the plan to read a story with him. It's this great board book that we got at the Cardston Book Store called "No Dinosaurs at Church" and is a story about a little boy with an active imagination and wrestling with being reverent in church. It's really quite cute and Zane's really familiar with it so it's been going great - so far. I'm hoping that having me involved in the story will take some of the pressure off of him when we get up there and he won't be as nervous. We'll see. And if I end up reading the whole story while he stands there with me....well that's ok to. I remember crying through my first talk sitting on my teacher's knee while mom read it at the pulpit.



I've been a real slacker at taking pictures lately - I keep meaning to bring my camera to the park with us...and then I forget. Rhett loves the swing and hates to get out and half the time I only know where Zane is because I can find his red hat!



Did I forget to mention that Grandpa Dooley got to visit us this week? We had lots of fun playing with Grandpa....and I've got the pics to prove it. Enjoy!