Date Night

Kirby took Lydia out on their first date night last night.  Having regular "dates" with our kids is something we've always planned to do when they got a little bit older.  Lydia has been having a bit of an attitude lately, and has been very clingy to mom, so we thought it would be good for her to have some one on one daddy time and start our date tradition.

They went to McDonalds, he took her to Wal-mart and let her walk around and not have to ride in a cart, something I never let her do, and they played in the park.  They didn't get home until after 9:00, so they had some good quality time together.  She was happy and talkative when they got home, despite the fact that she had not had a nap all day.  Date night #1...a success!





When Clae heard Daddy and Lydia were going on a date he asked me, "can we go on a date to the restaurant?"  Meaning the Village Cafe here in town.  I said, "sure."  So, we drove the tool truck to the Village Cafe and split a tenderloin and fries.  Then we went and played at the park and came home and watched a movie.  We had a nice little date of our own.

Lydia's 3rd Birthday

My baby girl turned three on Monday.  THREE YEARS OLD!  It seems like yesterday that she was born.

We had Kirby's family over to celebrate on Friday night.  We did a zebra theme this year.  I made the cupcakes and got this dress at Hobby Lobby.  I added the pink bow to it using fabric tape.  I didn't take in to account the fact that the ribbon would not stretch, so we couldn't get the dress on her.  We ended up cutting the ribbon on the sides but still had to struggle to get the thing on her.  Add that to the fact that she really didn't want to wear the dress in the first place and she was just plain mad by the time we got it on.  Needless to say, a mad, crying, clinging little girl doesn't make for the best pictures.  This is the only decent one we ended up with on Friday night.  She did get in a better mood later, after we let her put shorts on, but I was so stressed by then that I didn't even think to get the camera out.  She got a bike from Grandma and Grandpa Cass which she can ride like a champ.  I didn't get a picture of it but I'll get one before the summer is over.

Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with her!!!

Monday morning on her actual birthday.  I got this little tote for her from a Thirty one party I went to.  It's so handy, we've used it a ton already.

 Princess Band-aids

 Trident bubble gum. She's easy to please!

 The traditional cinnamon rolls.

We celebrated with my family on Monday evening.  She's a much happier girl when we let her wear what she wants to wear.

She had a great birthday.  Daddy was home with us all day, which is a rare treat, and had a lot of fun celebrating with friends and family.

Memorial Weekend Fun

The weekend started out with Lydia's 3rd Birthday party on Friday night, but I'll do a separate post for that.

Saturday morning we had a t-ball game that we thought started at 10:00 but acutally started at 11:00.  We didn't figure this out until AFTER we had driven to Bonaparte.  We ended up turning around and going back home and skipping the game so we could make to to our next activity at noon.  We asked Clae if it was ok with him to skip the game.  He said "that's fine, I don't want to play my games ALL the days."  I think he's getting kind of ready for t-ball to be over.

Every year we get together on Memorial weekend to celebrate Kirby's Grandma Brown's birthday, which happens to be the same day as Lydia's.  This year was 91 for her, there were well over 100 people there this year, all her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  Pretty impressive.  This is the only picture I managed to get.  Clae and Lydia and two of their cousins.

Saturday night I had my FIFTEEN year class reunion.  Wow, I feel old.  My sister had her 10 year, it wasn't a special year for my mom, she just never misses an opportunity to socialize!  And it was my dad's 40 year, but I guess we didn't get a picture of him.

Me and one of my classmates and good friends, Val.

All TEN of us who showed up to the reunion.  Woo Hoo!  We had a much bigger crowd at our ten year and hopefully we'll have more people show up to our twenty year.

 The only four girls that were there.

Sunday we went to my cousin Chirstopher's graduation.  We stopped at the automatic car wash on the way.  The kids do NOT care for the automatic car wash!

We also ended up making an unscheduled trip to the PICU at the University Hospital in Iowa City.  Kirby's cousin and his family were here for the weekend from Missouri.  They have a four month old baby who had fallen out of her baby seat and hit her head earlier in the week.  She seemed totally fine on Saturday other than a bump on her head, but by Saturday night she started vomiting so they took her to the ER and ended up taking her to Iowa City by aircare because she had fractured her skull.  Very scary, but she is doing very well and is going to get to go home soon.

This was supposed to be in Lydia's birthday post but it ended up in here.  Sibling love!

Monday we went fishing at Grandpa Cass' pond.

And then ate hot dogs at the timber spot.

Clae wanted me to take this picture and he did this cute little pose.

He got tired after lunch and had to take a little rest.

After lunch we swam in our pool and ate ice cream.

We went to my parents later in the evening for cake and ice cream, pictures of that will be in the next post.

This is what my kitchen looked like by the end of the weekend.  And that's just the kitchen, the rest of the house is about as bad.

3rd Article in the "Mommy Wars" Series

Mommy wars in the local church.

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/mommy-wars-in-the-local-church-a-parable

End of the Mommy Wars

Here is the next article in the "Mommy Wars" series.  I posted the first article yesterday.

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/the-end-of-mommy-wars

Mom Enough?

Another great article from the Desiring God blog.  Puts things into perspective.  We'll never be mom enough.

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/are-you-mom-enough-mommy-wars

Burlington Hawkeye Article

A reporter from the Burlington Hawkeye came to interview Kirby and Kelly about the project we're doing at the old Stockport school.  This article was in the Sunday Edition.  More publicity can't be a bad thing!