Kid date with Gideon

Gideon wanted to..... watch Disney cartoons!  He loves Donald Duck, Goofy, and especially those silly chipmunks Chip and Dale.  We had a great time, and he even forgave me for falling asleep for part of our date.
😴

He's one cute kid!

Kid Date with Reuben

Reuben and I went to a park and played all over the playset, including the scavenger hunt for the different pictures around the playground.  Then we stopped at McDonalds for dinner and more playtime!  We had a great time together, of course. He is the sweetest seven year old!

Kid Date: Evelyn

We went Roller Skating!  We had a fun time circling around the rink, despite a pained ankle.  We also got a late lunch at Sonic.  She is beautiful and fun inside and out!

Kid Date: Micah

After some technical difficulties with securing tickets to a new movie, we went to Burger King for dinner (he tried out a Triple Whopper!), then Game Stop for browsing, and then to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  We loved our time together!  He's a blast!

Kid Dates: Troy

Troy and I had an awesome time bowling .
(I totally won... but it won't be long before he surpasses me with his awesome spin!)






He's also been begging me to let him drive in a parking lot.   After we visited the store, I agreed.  It was quite humorous, he now has a greater appreciation for "all we do" while we are driving!

In the store....

In the parking lot:

Kid Dates: Owen

I'm having the kids pick out the activity for our date together...

Owen creatively chose to go to Party City and buy a dozen balloons... so we could suck the helium out of them and record our crazy voices!  It was hilarious!  What an awesome kid!

Kid dates: Leslie

Leslie and I went to Chili's for dinner, and devoured the salted caramel molten cake.... We played Five Crowns and laughed ourselves silly all the way home... must have been all that sugar.....

Kid dates

are yummy and fun!

Evelyn is Funtastic!

We took Evelyn to Funtastico (a Chuck E. Cheese-like experience).  They have some fun activities for little kids, like climbing walls, a velcro wall, trampolines, and bumper scooters.  She had a blast!  I had fun climbing and trying to fit through the toddler treehouse as we played together.  Bob enjoyed throwing her as high as he could on the velcro wall...

We've been doing our "kid dates" this month to get us back in the habit, but I didn't take any pictures or blog about them.  Hopefully the kids know we love them despite the lack of documentation on the family blog!

Sweet 16!

My husband and I have been married for 16 years!  
Time doth softly, sweetly glide, when there is love at home.
I love him.  He loves me.  We have a happy family!

I gave him a 12 days of our anniversary, patterned after the 12 days of Christmas gifts.  It was pretty fun and gave us some different and special dates together.
1- "Par" tridge in a pear tree gave us some mini golfing time together.  Well, this one didn't turn out as planned since I couldn't find a mini golfing location.  Plus also, we couldn't find our Wii Sports.  So I improvised and we played a game the kids are fond of: sock golf.  We hit socks across the room with the Wii golf controller.  Go ahead and laugh, we did!
2- Two turtle doves...  This was easy!  We have a turtle (okay, a tortoise) and I taped two Dove chocolate bars on her back and placed her in Bob's path.  He thought it was hilarious enough to take a few pictures.

3- French Hens.... I made a yummy french toast casserole for breakfast
4- Calling Birds... We went to Chik-Fil-A for dessert (a stretch, but it worked)
5- Golden Rings... a "baker's 5 doughnuts"!  He likes raspberry filled, so I bought a 1/2 dozen of them
6- Geese a Laying... We took a walk around a lake and fed the ducks and we even were able to feed a goose!  It was a bit of a wild goose hunt!
7- Swans a Swimming... some shower gel (it is a bit cold now to go swimming!)
8- Maids a Milking... Easy Peasy!  8 Milky Ways
9- Ladies Dancing... A new cd on iTunes with 9 ladies singing
10- Lords a Leaping... This was on Sunday, and I still wanted to keep the day holy, so I wrote out my testimony of our Lord and Savior.  We leap for joy when we share our testimonies, right?
11- Pipers Piping... The kids and I made pipe cleaner people and had them holding Pirouette cookies and a gift card for dinner
12- Drummers Drumming... A massage!  YAY!

We went out for dinner on the day after our anniversary, thank you very much mutual and scouting activities.  It was a lovely 13 days, and has been an amazing and awesome 16 years!

I love you Bob!

Fear Factor or Date Night? (or both?)

Last night my honey and I went on a date night. We went on the aerial tramway up to the top of the Franklin Mountain State Park. It was quite a view! Then we went to a Mongolian Grill and Chinese Buffet. The Mongolian Grill was fantastic. And the buffet had almost everything you can imagine. . . including . . . "baby octopus." I was so surprised, I couldn't help putting it on my plate and taking a picture of it next to my other food. How weird.

And I am sure you are all grossed out, but I decided to be brave and try it. It was actually kind of hard to convince my mouth to open and bite tentacles off and actually chew and eat them. This is very much unlike me. The entire time Dresden was refusing to even look at me or watch me eat any of it. She was sufficiently disgusted and horrified with my choice of food!

Honestly - it wasn't bad. It reminds me of shrimp, and the sauce was spicy enough to overpower any other taste. So now I can check that off my bucket list- eat octopus!

By the way, lest you think I am truly brave and all that, I could NOT bring myself to eat the bulbous "head." I am brave, but not that brave- who knows what lies inside there.

A new idea for a date: the watching of a drug bust!

Not jesting.

Bob and I went to a library park on Friday night for a picnic date. It was hot, but slightly cooler in the shade of a tree right next to the library building. We ate our sandwiches, salad, fruit, chips, all the while enjoying people watching and our good conversation.

Suddenly, a man strode quickly past us while slinging a police badge around his neck. Our attention was called to the second man perpendicular to us who brandished a gun (movie style) to the teenage boys behind us and yelled "Get on the ground! Get on the ground now!" They proceeded to cuff the young boys and instruct them on proper handcuffing etiquette, "No, not on your backs, get on your faces with your hands behind you!" and "You know why you're under arrest, don't you?" At first we thought this was an elaborate joke on the young men, but quickly realized with the appearance of the gun that this was the real deal. We are very glad the teenagers didn't have their own guns and that this didn't turn out to be dangerous and harmful.

At least the policemen were nice enough (after the boys were cuffed and led away) to come back to us and tell us they were sorry for ruining our picnic...

Real-Life Dinner Theater! At our local library!

We finished our date night by packing up our picnic (obviously earlier than expected...) and we headed to Baskin Robbins for our ice cream treats. We opted to not visit the frozen yogurt establishment that had a police car in the parking lot.

(No pictures... our kids were disappointed at our lack of pictures and videos too, but really, that would have been a bit taboo, right?)

Japanese Steakhouse

Bob took me on a fun date to a Japanese Steakhouse last night. We had a fun time laughing at how our chef spoke Spanish to our tablemates - only in El Paso...!

The rest of our date was roasting marshmallows over a palm tree leaf fire - again, only in El Paso!