Our First Date :-)

OK, the title of this might be fairly misleading. Our first date was 15 yrs ago, but last night WAS a first date of sorts. It was our first date with a hired non-family babysitter where we weren't in the next room, but actually in the next town!! Very exciting for us. :-) A sweet young girl from our church watched our kids. We picked her up and brought her here, showed her around, and then took off. The kids didn't even say goodbye. So, any fears we had about them hanging on us and crying as we left were completely unfounded. Livie didn't even come out of her room to see us off. You'd think I'd be sad about that, but I wasn't. That just reassured me that she was going to be fine and have a great time. Pete and I did a little more couch shopping, before heading out to dinner. Our bank a few months ago double charged us for our house payment, which caused a domino effect with all our other bills. They corrected it and gave us a gift certificate for $50 to this place in Ottawa called Monte's. I had never really been there, so I was excited to go. It's really unassuming from the outside, but inside it's really dark, candlelit, and romantic. AND, it seriously had the best food I have ever had EVER!!! I got a chicken parmisan that was literally on a plate 2' long and the chicken was like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of chicken. It was gigantic. I maybe ate a corner of it. There was so much. Even Pete gasped when he saw it! But, not only was it of epic proportions, it was sooooo delicious! Pete got a prime rib, but couldn't resist my chicken. So yummy! After that, we were running late, so we called Anna and she said she could stay as long as we needed her - told ya she was sweet! So, we headed over to the store and did Noah's birthday shopping. It was so fun getting a chance to get out, have some peace and quiet, and get a meal in without worrying about cutting up the food or saying "keep eating!" as the kids got distracted. And, we even got to hold hands. Usually we have a couple kids between us when we do that. :-) I don't have pictures from last night to post, because Pete thought that would be dorky. I wanted to take pictures of us at the furniture store, the restaurant, Walmart, etc... chronicling our date, but it was probably better that we just enjoyed it instead of keeping track of it for the blog. Now that we know how well they do without us, I hope this will be the first of many dates in our future. After almost 8 years of having children and only maye 8 dates to speak of during those years, I think it's about time we took a little break once in a while for ourselves, don't ya think? :-)

Gimme An "A"

Tonight was Madie's pom-pom performance and she did a terrific job!!! She was so cute and you can tell she's a dance girl, because she really followed the dance moves. Nana and Papa Trolinger stopped by on their way up to Pete's sister's house and we went out to dinner, then headed over to watch Madie's half-time show.


Here is Nana T with Olivia in the stands while we were waiting for Madie to come out. :-)

Here's her group performing. This was the K-2nd grade class. There were a LOT of girls that came to the camp this year. There were 4 classes total and all of them were about this size.

Madie's there in the middle - the short one with skinny little legs.

Here she is when we picked her up afterwards. I made her do a dance move for me. I'm a dork. I know. But, she's still a cutie!!

This was all of us (minus me who was taking the picture) after she was done. Great performance Madie!!! Now, on to the recital in May!!

**Can you tell how thrilled Pete was that I made them take a picture. ;-) hehe

Flashback Friday

Well, it's Friday again (hooray!!!) and it's going to be a busy day. We had a doctor's appt for Livie this morning - just to check on her speech progress. I told the doc that she's doing great! I said if she can name all the Star Wars characters, then by our standards, she's perfect. :-) Then we had to do some birthday shopping for some friends who are celebrating their 1st and 3rd birthdays tomorrow. And, we stopped by and picked up some great clearance clothes at Farm and Fleet for the kids. Now, I'm off to clean the house before Pete's parents get here and we take them out to dinner for their 35th wedding anniversary. They're going with us tonight to see Madie perform in her Pom-Pom performance, before heading up to Pete's sister's house. ANYWAY, thought I'd pop on here and do my "Flashback Friday" entry - want to again mention I got this idea from our friend Kristen who does it on her blog. The picture above was taken a few months after our wedding back in 1999. We lived in NY our first year of marriage and it just so happens that that same year my sister started at Word of Life and Micah was in his 3rd year there. So, all of us kids were within an hour of each other. Fun, huh?! Well, mom had her stroke actually THE DAY we left for NY. It was awful having to leave and not know what was happening to her. One of the hardest things I ever had to do was leave. Really tested the whole "leave your family and cleave to your husband" thing. But, a few months after her stroke, dad brought Em out to school and he stopped at our place to spend the night. Before he headed back home, we decided to take him to Cooperstown to the Baseball Hall of Fame, which was only about an hour from us. He had been there once before with mom when they brought Micah out to WoL that first year, I believe. But, mom wasn't nearly as interested in the place as dad was. But, she humored him. :-) He was super excited to know Pete was going to be there. Way more excited than knowing I, his beloved daughter, was there. You see, once Pete became a part of our family, they've liked him WAY more. They think Pete's just the best and somewhere, down the line, I'm in there too. Like 12th on the list, maybe 15th. But, Pete's up there - top five easily. I mean, he golfs, like the Cubs, likes the Bears, and he's republican. Really don't have any other criteria other than those things if you want to get in good with my dad. :-) So, we spent the day there, seeing all the great stuff they had displayed. Dad telling us the history of everything we ever wanted to know (and didn't). I remember one of the highlights was seeing Harry Carey's glasses on display. He was the announcer for the Cubs for years and years. So, that was pretty cool. It was a fun day and one of the many trips we took that first year we were married - ya know, back before we had kids and couldn't go to Walmart, let alone a museum!! That's us standing in front of a picture of Ty Cobb. Aren't you impressed that I know that?! Of course, when you start sorting baseball cards at the age of 1 and get woken up in the middle of the night to celebrate Kirk Gibson's homerun when you're 10, then you have to be up on your baseball info!!

"If I Were 100 yrs Old"

I got this in Madie's school folder today. It seems like once a month, she'll come home with some type of sheet like this and they always make me smile. It's interesting to me to see what a bright, little 7 yr old thinks of certain things. Since she hasn't actually MET any 100 yr olds, I'm not sure where she came up with these, but she's probably pretty spot on there. She did get to meet my RC neighbor and dear friend Betty on her 90th birthday, but Betty doesn't have white hair, doesn't have a wheelchair, and doesn't knit - that I'm aware of. But, I think her ideas are pretty good ones. :-) I wonder what it must be like to meet someone who's 90 when you're only 7. I know for me, being 34, meeting someone that's 100 and that would have THAT much history to share, would be fascinating. I'm a history gal and when I was in my early 20s, I used to love to chat with my grandpa about what it was like for him as a young kid. He was in his late 80s when we'd have these discussions. We didn't have many of them, but the ones we did, I remember enjoying so much. I wish now I had had more time with him to find out more. To keep a record of those stories. Stories that are now only in my mind. Anyway, thought I'd share Madie's thoughts on what it would be like for her if she was 100. If any of us are still around when she's that age, we'll have to see how close she was to being right. :-)

Tasting Bugs?

My kids got a little tube of Crest gel from the dentist office a while ago and loved it! It's dark blue berry-flavored and that was always the kind they requested. Well, it ran out the other day, so they had to use a strawberry-flavored one they didn't like as much. So, I went looking for this special dark blue paste at Walmart tonight and found a large tube of it. Well, since it's not in the same tube as the dinky one we had, Noah wasn't too sure about it.

He said, "I'll have to use my tasting bugs to see if it tastes the same."

"Tasting BUGS?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, "they are inside my tongue and they help me taste things.".

I said, "You have bugs in your mouth?".

"Yes, but they're nice bugs. They let me know if something is gross. I learned that in school"

So, apparently my fear of bugs in the outside world means nothing, because we all have a mouthful of them!

We Love Our Daddy!

Why do we love daddy?

Madie: Because he plays MarioKart. Um, and he watches "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" with me.

Noah: Because he is a boy like me. And, because I like him. And, that's not all.... I like how he gives me haircuts.

Olivia: 'Cuz, yeah, run around with me. Um, watch Star Wars with me and that all.

How is Daddy silly?

Madie: He makes silly faces.

Noah: He sometimes does funny things. Like remember when you were playing Zelda and the fairy went away and daddy said, "Um, maybe she has to go to the bathroom". hahahahaha

Olivia: Hmmm..cuz, run around guy (on Zelda) and baby green dinosaur too. Um, die on Zelda. Yeah, funny. haha Pushed that pig away.

How do we show Daddy we love him?

Madie: I give him hugs and kisses.

Noah: We give him big hugs when he comes back from Toronto. And, work.

Olivia: 'Cuz, hmmm..., poop. Yeah, poop and that all. I show him green dinosaur and that all.

**Just a note - when I asked Noah how MOMMY was silly, he said (and I quote) "You poop your pants". Then he continued with gales of laughter. For the record I do NOT poop my pants, but I'm glad to know that that is the ONE thing he thinks is funny about me. Oh, and if you can't tell, poop is a HUGE topic of conversation in our household. Not sure how that happened, but for a good 30 min today in the van Noah and Olivia were discussing eating dinosaur poop and making chomping noises and rubbing their bellies and laughing. So, knowing that they like dinosaur poop puts the whole broccoli thing in perspective. Anyway, we love you daddy and we miss you a lot and can't wait to see you again! :-) Don't know how'll you manage to go three whole days without these types of discussions. Aren't you glad I'm posting them for you. ;-)