Taking some mommy time and enjoying the long weekend

I realize I didn't blog anything about our days from Friday on so I have some catching up to do. On Friday, our main things were the start of September's library story time, working out at the Y, and visiting with friends that night. The story time theme at the library was trains and how funny that J was wearing his train shirt today (picture to the left). He was pretty into it, especially when it came to the songs and ones he remembered like the hello song. He also seems to stay by me now, whereas he used to wander around a bit. After my workout at the Y and picking up J from their child care, he kept saying "the dinosaurs were wet mommy" and I had no idea what he meant until they told me he had watched while they washed them. In the afternoon, I took a mommy "time out" having a babysitter come while I went to a special showing of Avatar in 3D. I think the last time I went to the theater was a year and a half ago. I really enjoyed the special effects and the movie was pretty decent. It seemed to borrow from other movies I've seen (Dances with Wolves, Braveheart) and I wasn't into the new age religious parts. Yet, just taking the time to go to the theater which is something I really enjoy, is so nice. After dinner, we spent some time with friends we've recently connected with. L grew up with both of them and I just met them recently, but really enjoy the time we spend together. Of course, L loves to reminisce since they went to school together, but we also like to talk about our faith. J had a hard time letting me talk with the adults and kept wanting to be held, or play or color with him. He finally relaxed when their girls put on Mickey Mouse and he loved watching.

Saturday morning was a treat. We went to our Farmer's Market for only the 2nd time this summer. It is located downtown on what they call the capitol square. It is actually the largest producer-only farmer's market in the country. J did pretty well sitting in his stroller for a long time as we walked around. We also stopped to listen to a couple different musicians along the way. The rest of the day was pretty low-key and I got to catch up on some of the mommy blogs that I follow. Lately, it's been hard to do that as it seems there's always something going on. I really enjoyed the Rethinking series my blog friend Tea has been writing. So many of her thoughts are things I've been thinking about lately, especially related to trying to live life simply and decluttering. It goes along with my buying fast where I'm not buying anything (other than essentials) for 30 days and taking time to reflect on what I see. I'll be writing about that weekly, probably starting tomorrow.

Yesterday (Sunday) we went to the morning service at our church to volunteer. I'm with the 3-year-olds and L is with the 4th graders. We had 14 kids in our room today and the time flew. There seems to be one or two kids who end up sticking by me most of the time. It's been kind of neat. We teach the 3-year-olds the same thing they teach J so it's helpful for me to be able to talk to J about how his time was. He remembered they talked about Hannah. When I asked about it he said, "She was sad. She prayed to God." Then he said something about David and Goliath and was mixing things up.

At home, we had a little bit of play time and then daddy took J on a little outing to the lake by the Memorial Union Terrace. I was fighting a headache and feeling wiped out so I got some great R&R for a few hours and watched a movie that goes with a book I just read called God Grew Tired of Us. The movie was good but it didn't get into the detail the book did. I really enjoyed the book as I've read a few about the Lost Boys of Sudan yet this one was especially inspiring. The author is a member of the Dinka tribe and is a Christian. He has a solid faith and it's amazing to see what he's done with his life after the horrors he endured. When they got back from their outing, J got to tell me about his favorite things from their time. They took a walk by the lake and he loved seeing the ducks. When I asked about the lake he just said, "The lake was blue." Cute.

We went to the evening service at church and they had no child care available. They weren't able to get enough volunteers so J came joined us. He was excited about that yet I hadn't prepared for it. A friend from my mom's group gave me a bag of Kix cereal to keep him busy with a snack. He ended up doing really well in the service which surprised me. The Kix did help along with a coloring book I had for him. It was hard for me though to pay attention to the message while managing J. This was our final sermon in our "Wired for Relationship" series. Today's talk was about how we are living stones (1Peter 2-5) and although Christ is the center (our cornerstone Ephesians 2:19-22) it is through life in the body that we grow. He likened this to building a stone wall where all the stones fit in tightly together and hold each other up. In this, we also see the support we receive from the body (if it is healthy) and also the support we are to give to one another. We went over all the verses in the bible that are referred to as the "one another" verses. This would be a good study to do sometime.

Monday was Labor Day and started off cloudy but we still ventured out to Devil's Lake in Baraboo, WI. We spent the day by the lake reading and playing with J. It wasn't warm enough really to swim so I brought plenty of J's toys and spread them out on the blanket. He had the most fun when daddy or I would join him in playing with his elephants and making up little stories together.






On our way home, we stopped at Grampa Bernie's place and spent some time there. J had been sleeping and took a little bit to wake up and then wanted to read all the little kid books Grampa could find.










We stopped for some food on the way home and I'm glad we had J's toys since he hadn't had a nap and it could have been a recipe for melt down city. He was so funny playing with his toys and was really animated. He got a bath when we got home and then daddy was snoozing in our room so J tried to wake him. He couldn't and started crying, "Daddy's not going to read me a book" and was really upset so we both went in there and this time J was able to wake him and roused daddy for some reading time.