Cold Fall Weekend

Well, this past weekend was a great chance to relax and enjoy the fall weather. It's getting cold and it rained all last week. Friday, I arranged for a baby sitter and Amy and I went out on a date with Angie and Gary. For dinner, we went to Red Robin's for my first time. When we couldn't decide what to get, I called Ammon and Liz and Liz said that they were also at Red Robin's (in Utah) - I guess this would be strange except that this is their favorite place to go. It was so nice to be with Angie and Gary again. With all that's going on, it's just been too crazy to get together. Afterwards, we tried to go to a movie, but since we both don't have television, we didn't know much about the movies playing and ended up just renting a movie and going back to our place to watch it (after we put our kids to bed, of course).



Saturday morning I made breakfast (we seem to have a tradition of me making meals on Saturdays). Afterwards, Baily and I went to help move Arlan Rose and his family out of their home. Baily really enjoys going with me to move people and she is really good at watching babies while mothers finish packing up small things. I think it's good for her to get a small taste of helping others and I can tell she enjoys it.
After lunch Amy worked on the girls Halloween costumes while I played with them for about two and a half hours outside. Since my girls have no problem being girls, I thought I'd give them a taste of what it would be like to have a brother. We pretended we were in the Book of Mormon wars (title of Liberty and all). But in this war, we also had land mines for the "bad-guys." We advanced, retreated, placed land mines, shot arrows, bandaged my wounds, made camp for two nights, took turns on "watch," built a fort, and had a great time.
After a couple hours we finally had to go in to get warm. This was easily done because Amy had finished the fleece costumes for the girls. We put them all on and the girls laughed and played and pretended to be lions. Amy tied a thin string to their tails, so they stick up in the back as if they were real tails. We had fun pretending and by the time we got them out of the costumes, they were all warm again. I had to get some studying done, so I sent the girls in to the toy room to "clean up." Which usually means, clean up for about thirty seconds and then get distracted and play for an hour. If we tell them to go play, they don't want to do it, but if they have to clean up, it becomes a much better option. Next we went grocery shoping, had dinner and got the kids to bed. It was such a fun and relaxing day. I hope my girls can remember some of these fun times we've spent together. In some ways, I feel like we are such "home-bodies." We don't really do a lot of traveling or go to big shows, mostly we just like to be home and enjoy eachother. It's a little frightening thinking that the closeness we have with these girls will probably be lost during teenage years. It makes me feel an even greater need to spend time with and enjoy my girls right now while they're willing.

Here are a couple pictures of the girls in their costumes: