A Week Full of Non-Homecooked Meals…

Man, Austin only left a few hours ago and I’m already pooped! Whew, anyway, here is the recap of our week:

On Monday our Play and Learn was held at Gymboree.  For those of you who don’t know, Gymboree is set up almost like a kids’ gym with lots of climbing toys and slides and whatnot.  It is for kids ages 0-5, and they also have different classes (music, sports, etc.) that kids can take.  But our Play and Learn group just rented it out for the morning for us.  It was SO nice to get to go there to let the kids play! Honestly, those kiddos have been driving me nuts wanting to climb on everything in our house! So it was fantastic to go and let them run and climb on whatever they wanted! : ) If it wasn’t so darn expensive (we got a HUGE discount for going with our Play and Learn group!) we would go more often!

I took over 100 pictures at Gymboree… don’t worry, I’m not going to post all of them! But there are quite a few pictures, so get ready! ; )

     

This is a cool toy.  It looks like a top but it is big enough to sit on.  Makenna and Max both loved sitting on it and letting me spin them around!

          

LOTS of climbing for the crazy-monkey Max!

     

Can you tell that I stayed with Max most of the time? Makenna was fine going off and playing on her own, but Max wanted me right there with him the whole time.  Hence the MANY pictures of Max and the super-far-away pictures of Makenna! : D

            

Makenna LOVED getting to jump around everywhere!

       

The kids climbed into the area for the babies.  It had a lot of soft toys in it and blankets.  The kids thought it would be fun to pretend to sleep. : )

  

    

After free play, we sang songs and played with different instruments. 

     

And then we all got to sit on a parachute for snack and story time.

Then we closed with parachute play (in these pictures the kids are all lying under the parachute and the moms lifted it up and down).

It was a little stressful because there were a LOT of kids and moms there, so lots of noise and running around and people, but it was still really fun! : )

That night for FHE we talked about the fact that Austin was about to leave and be gone for 3 months on rotations.  The kids don’t really understand what “3 months” is, but we wanted to stress to them that Daddy would be gone and they needed to be big helpers for mom.  To illustrate that they are big kids (and are big enough to help mom while Daddy is gone), we played a game called “I Can Do".”  The kids rolled a dice and whatever square they landed on told them an action to do.  And because they are big now, they were able to do all of their actions until they reached the finish line.

Here are a few of the things we can do (these pictures are HORRIBLE! It is SO dark in our house!):

They can fold their arms:

They can make a sad face:

They can be cats, dogs, lions, monkeys… (I don’t know which is which.  There were a lot of animals to be in the game!):

Austin as a lion on his turn:

They can jump:

      

They can stand on one foot (and Dad can hold kids on his arms AND stand on one foot at the same time!):

      

It was a fun FHE and hopefully the kids will remember that they ARE big now and they CAN be helpful while their Daddy is gone!

On Tuesday we had our last beach day.  Sad face! Oh how we have loved going to the beach every week! Unfortunately, the beach closes down after Labor Day.  On Tuesday, it was actually already cold in the water so the kids mostly just played on the beach.  And so the trips to the beach has come to an end!

 

Austin got home late on Tuesday night, but I was still able to go out with some fun ladies for a girl’s night out.  We went to see the movie The Help. It was a good movie, and it was fun to get to go out with the girls while I had someone at home to watch my kids AKA Austin. : )

On Wednesday the kids and I ran errands all day.  We were out of pretty much everything around the house and also had to get school supplies because preschool starts NEXT WEEK! : ) We were actually gone from home all morning, through lunch, and into the early afternoon.

For lunch we ate at Target’s little cafe.  The kids were SO excited to get Target hotdogs.  It’s the little things in life, right?  Ha ha. 

That night, Austin worked late again so we met him at the hospital after work and had dinner and then did some Sam’s Club shopping.

On Thursday we were still pretty pooped from our all-day-shopping and late night the night before.  So we tried to stay around the house as much as possible.  Austin had Journal Club that night, so we had to bring him some clothes to wear to it after work.  Since the kids and I were already in town, we grabbed a bite to eat and then went to the mall to roam around until Austin finished.

Dinner:

 

Playplace at the mall:

Riding the carousal:

A ride on an ice cream truck:

   

On Friday the washer repairman finally finished fixing our washing machine.  Then we had some cute little friends came over to play while their mom went to the doctor.  That night Austin, once again, worked late so we, once again, met him after work and went and had dinner (yes, it’s true, I only made dinner twice this whole entire week.  It was just such a crazy week with Austin working late and us having to do so many errands to prepare for him to leave this weekend.  Plus, we thought we should get in as many dinners as we could before he did leave!).

Saturday was a fun (though LONG!) day.  We got up and left early that morning to go outlet shopping.  We have ZERO winter clothes after living in Arizona for three years, so we had to go and get the kids some warmer clothes! We figured outlet shopping would give us the best prices (plus it is so fun to hit the outlets!).

Just for fun, we went into the Bass Pro Shop (yes, they have an outlet!).  The kids had fun looking at the fish and the animals:

  

The outlets had a Rainforest Cafe in it, so we thought that would be a fun place to take the kids for lunch.  And it was! Makenna, especially, could barely eat or concentrate on anything because she was so excited by the rain and the animals around her!

        

Max was pretty freaked out during the “thunderstorm” every half hour!

We finally returned home at around 2, absolutely pooped.  We didn’t get a whole lot (good grief are fall and winter clothes expensive!), but hopefully we will be more prepared for the upcoming cool weather!

That night, friends in the ward watched the kids so Austin and I could go out on a date.  We went out to eat (I’m pretty sure I won’t be ready to go out to eat again for at least a month! I’m actually pretty tired of eating out now!!!) at Outback (Austin’s favorite!) and then to a movie. We saw Zookeeper at the cheap theater.  One word for that movie—lame!!! But it was nice to get out on one-last date.  Thanks Chamberlains for watching the kids for us!

Today (Sunday) we got Austin all packed up and he gave us all a blessing.  It is SO nice to have a worthy Priesthood holder in our home! All three blessings brought tears to my eyes.  We love our Daddy! Then the kids and I left for Church and Austin left for Atlanta.  He will be in Atlanta for the rest of September, then Indiana in October, and finally Washington in November.  We will miss that guy a ridiculous amount!  How has it been so far? This picture may give you a good clue:

That is Makenna’s arm.  They came and showed it to me during the third hour of Church.  During nursery, Max decided he would BITE Makenna.  Hard enough to draw blood.  And he is already in bed because he tried to bite her THREE more times since we have been home! Yup, this will be a LONG three months!  We miss you already Austin!!!

 

We did a lot of super-cute hair this week, but I only took pictures of one:

 

I LOVED that look!