A Great Weekend

Billy and I have never been good at establishing and maintaining date nights. That got even worse after Will was born. Recently Billy suggested something very doable for us--date night at home. On Friday night we tried it out, and let me tell you, it was amazing. I set out the rarely used china and Billy picked up dinner for two at P.F. Changs on his way home from work. We got the kids to bed, opened up a bottle of vino, and had dinner. Our rules--dress up (i.e., no basketball shorts or pajama pants) and talk about something other than our kids and work. We followed up dinner with a rousing game of Scrabble. ;-)

If you are like us and don't have grandparents close by to babysit and don't feel comfortable leaving your kids with a babysitter you don't know very well (our situation since we don't know all that many babysitters in Dallas), try this out--you won't regret it. We're going to try and make this a weekly thing, alternating who plans the evening, so I'll keep you all posted on future date night ideas!



(Regular spoons wouldn't fit in our mini desserts so we had to resort to baby spoons.)





On Saturday we went out to our local Oktoberfest. The festival had a great area for the kiddos--basketball hoops, balloon animals, airbrush temporary tattoos, pony rides, bounce houses and a petting zoo. The kiddos looked so cute riding the ponies.







Will really enjoyed the petting zoo. He ran around with his hand out in front of him chasing any animal that came in his path. Occasionally one would come up next to him and he'd jump back--it was precious! To be honest, the turtles freaked me out a little bit.

















On Sunday afternoon we attended a Second Birthday Party at The Little Gym for Miller, one of Will's friends from his Little Gym class last year. The kiddos had a blast playing with the parachute, jumping on the bounce track, shooting hoops, chasing bubbles, and playing on the equipment in the gym. Miller and Will aren't in The Little Gym together anymore, but Kristi (Miller's mom) and I have become friends and now the boys have regular playdates.







Can you believe that Kristi (in the pic below) has a 12 day old baby girl! Our playdates are going to get even more crazy with Cate and Helen here now.









About a week ago Cate started rolling from back to front. She's starting to get pretty good and usually flips over on her first try--we now find her sleeping on her tummy most of the time. Here is a video of her rolling over last night (note Laney at the end--always in position to play with a kid if the kid wants to play).



Cate has also been enjoying her exersaucer lately.





Cate's exersaucer plays a song that Will has been singing lately. The only words are Red, Yellow and Blue, but boy does he like to belt it out (if you listen closely you can hear it playing in the background). Too cute not to share (note Laney again)!