BUSTED!!

Last night I really needed to go out. Maybe it was the cleaning all day (and coming home to my own house not being clean AND no dinner on the table)... So my sweet husband fed the kids dinner and then we told them that they could watch a movie while we were out if they promised to turn it off at 8:30 and go to bed since it was a school night. They promised whole-heartedly. (Of course!)

We went to a sushi place and had a great time talking, relaxing and eating California rolls, tempura, and teriyaki chicken. After we ate we walked over to the movie theater to see if there was a movie we wanted to see. We were 10 minutes late for the one that Rob liked so we decided to wait for the next showing in about 45 minutes. Since we live 5 minutes from the theater we decided to go home and check on the kids while we waited.

We got home a little before their 'bedtime' so we decided to prowl around the house and peek in the windows to see what they would do at 8:30. They were both engrossed in the show (you can hardly blame them... I don't watch the clock when I'm watching a show). :P Rob kept joking about pounding on the windows or door to freak them out but we decided that it wouldn't be very nice so instead we decided to just ring the doorbell and see what they did. (We've had a hard time drilling into them that they DON'T OPEN THE DOOR while we're gone.) We also decided that of course they'd open the door if they saw it was us so Rob pressed the door bell and squeezed himself against the wall, out of sight of the window or peep hole. (I was hiding around the other corner on the porch.) Nothing happened so he pressed it again. Again nothing. He proceeded to press it several times in succession during which I looked out to the street and realized, "Shoot!! So much for hiding...our car is right in front of the house!!" A few seconds later we heard the slow creak of the front door inching open and saw "The Avatar" (or BR) peek through. Rob and I laughed, yelling, "BUSTED!" but in the end we weren't sure if it was they who were busted or us. :)

Sizzling Super Saturday

Saturday was about the hottest day we had all year and we celebrated by working out in the heat!! :P We had our fun first though.

In the morning GM and I went down the street to an open house of a new model home village they opened over the weekend in our neighborhood. They made a big deal out of it by having free food being cooked in many of the homes (by local restaurants), prize drawings, cupcake decorating, a few live bands, and free movie tickets to see WALL-E for the whole family. We had fun looking through the homes for a while (while our kids stayed home and played wii) then we picked up our kids, grabbed some lunch and went down to the theater to see the movie. We all loved it. BR can't stop laughing about WALL-E picking up the bra and covering his eyes with it and then making some exclamation. :)

After the movie we came home, and in honor of the hottest part of the day, we decided to weed our yard and work in our garage and the loft above it. (I think it was hotter in the loft than it was outside!! It felt like a sauna up there. :P) Despite the heat we were able to get all the weeds pulled, the loft organized and some things taken care of in the garage and loft. After that, GM took a little break and then went to the loft to clean his guns (he got most of them done but it's so stinkin' hot up there he almost passed out...in spite of the window air conditioner we put up there) while I did some organizing in the house. We really got a lot accomplished and I felt super (I love that sort of thing, minus the heat).

For dinner I decided to make breakfast and BR offered me his services. He's really turning into quite a good little cook! He made waffles and I made an omelet. (The other night he made spaghetti and spaghetti sauce from scratch with minimal help from me!! Sunday night he and I made fajitas together, but he helped tremendously, he ran the salad shooter himself until we both broke down in tears from the onions.)

Home alone again

We left BR and MC home alone again today. We went to the world wide leadership training at the church (on strengthening families/parenting, I needed something after my performance as a mom yesterday!! :P) We decided to try a longer period of time (2 hours) since we were just going down the street to the church and we could come right home if need be. I was slightly anxious the whole time (don't know when we'll be completely used to the idea) but after the first hour it got worse and I asked ML to go call and check on them. They were fine and just playing the wii. About 15 minutes later they called us saying somebody is at the door and it's not a relative, but it's a man with a bag. Well we remind them of the strict instructions that they are not to open the door for ANYBODY unless the house is on fire and then they're to go to one of our trusted neighbors and make calls there. After this phone call I could hardly concentrate on the rest of the meeting. I got bits out of it, but the main thing I kept thinking was that our kids were home alone and there was a man with a "bag" (??) knocking on the door. (I can have quite the vivid imagination...after we got home and were assured our kids were safe I jokingly said to ML "That man with the bag could have stuffed our kids in it and carried them off!!", but it wasn't joke material until then.) :/

Once we were home, we found out it was the "water softener/purifier" guy that we'd scheduled to come at 3:00. He'd gotten confused and come an hour early.

"I'm the boss grandpa"

So, for a few months now, we've been leaving BR and MC home alone for short periods of time(much like Wayne and Ashley) and they've done really well so far, but I still feel the need to rehash with them all the do's and don'ts so they'll be safe. And I've learned with BR that he takes things very specifically and doesn't have a great knack at generalizing everything yet. He'll follow instructions to the "T" as long as he feels like they apply to a situation, but doesn't really extrapolate how they fit in with any other circumstance. Because of this I try to think of every possible scenario that might arise so that he can know how to handle it. Well, I forgot one this past week. My MIL and I decided to leave the kids home for a few minutes while we ran to the post office and a store. We left the kids doing their chores and plans to play the wii afterward. (Which they did!! Once again I'm reminded that they don't posses any of my genes...discipline?? when parents are gone?? the FIRST thing I would have done was turn on the TV or wii (if we'd had those back then)!!) We reminded them not to open the door for anybody, what to do in case of emergency, etc. etc. and we even taught them a new one that I hadn't thought of before,(thanks to the inspiration of Wayne's blog) we made sure MC knew what to do and who to call in case BR was hurt. Well about 20 minutes after we leave MIL gets a call from FIL (or Grandpa). He's just gotten home and the first words out of BR's mouth are, "Grandpa, I'm in charge." Lol. I guess grandpa doesn't rank high enough to relieve him of his "authority". :)