Picnics and Pony Rides

The weather here has been beautiful! I think we're still adjusting from the experience of living in Washington state. It still seems surreal to have so many days of sunshine in a row. We had a busy weekend but it was a good one. Mike was off on Friday again, he's been off every Friday for almost the last month (that makes his working till 7 or 8 during the rest of the week much easier). We started off the week with a date night. We were determined to see a movie, we haven't been to a movie in ages but we had a really hard time deciding on one. Movies have become such a treat that we really wanted to make sure we were seeing something that was "big screen" worthy and there just didn't seem to be that many options. Mike wanted to see "Revenge of the Titans" and I was leaning more towards "Date Night". We finally settled on "Percy Jackson and the Olympians". We had time for drinks and appetizers before the movie and then we headed over to the theater. We're still learning our way around and in our attempts to find the nice movie theater we ended up at the wrong movie theater and they didn't have the movie that we had decided on. They seemed to have 12 screens all showing "Revenge of the Titans" in 3D. Mike was thrilled, I was not as excited but decided to make myself feel better by spending more money than our movie tickets had cost at the concession stand.

On Saturday I headed out bright and early to do our weekly grocery shopping. It's actually been several weeks since I've been grocery shopping. We've learned that for us it makes such a huge difference when I plan our menu ahead of time and we got a little off track over the last couple of weeks. I got home just in time for us to head over to our neighborhood Picnic. The homeowners association put together a fabulous BBQ. They provided fried chicken, everybody brought a dish to share. There seemed to be a lot of people there but it never seemed crowded and of course we were outside so we weren't worried about Olivia. We met up with some friends there and had a great time. The girl scout troop was also selling tickets for pony rides. I felt guilty for not buying a single box of girl scout cookies this year so I bought a ticket. I was sure that Olivia would not be interested but Peter might. We arrived at the pony ride area towards the end of the day and for an extra $2 they said we could all ride so Mike, Olivia, Peter and I all got into the buggy for our pony ride. Peter enjoyed it, although he insisted that the pony was saying "woof woof". Olivia was kinda oblivious although she did pet the pony. It was fun though.

After a quick break for afternoon nap time we headed over to another BBQ. This time for with some people that work with Mike. There was another little boy who's just a few weeks older than Peter and they had fun playing with each other. Olivia was uncharacteristically un-shy and she spent the evening sitting on different laps according to which snacks the different adults were near and trying to sneak sips of beer (no idea what that was about). It was a really relaxed evening and it was nice to socialize with other people and feel kinda normal. The adults were all really great with Olivia and we all felt so comfortable there. We ended up staying late but we knew it was time to head home with Aiden (the little boy 3 weeks older than Peter) pointed up into the sky and said "moon" and then Peter told him "night night". SO CUTE!

I put the kids to bed while Mike headed off to a poker game. I enjoyed catching up on some of our recorded shows and organizing FRG stuff.

On Sunday I headed out to the mall, alone. It was so nice to be able to really take my time and look at things. The kids both spent some time playing in the back yard on Sunday afternoon and then we had a family movie night. Mike and I sat there in amazement as Olivia and Peter became totally engrossed in the "Princess and the Frog". Olivia's eyes were glued to the TV throughout the entire movie! If you haven't seen the Princess and the Frog it is an adorable movie!