Date night
Tonight my DH had his company Christmas party. We don’t have a sitter so I stayed home with the kids while he went to his party.
As long as I had to stay home I had a date night with my 3 favorite guys. 🙂 They’ve been looking forward to it all week, and frankly so have I. It’s been a long time since the boys’ and I have had a ‘date night’. Actually, the last one we had I was still pregnant with E and that was like 6 days before I had him. So this was nice.
When K got home from school we started to put up the tree. Just the two of us, E watched and J was still napping. We got it set up, I strung the lights and garland. And just when it came time for the decorating J woke up from his nap and he was excited to help. So I let the boys decorate the tree. That turned out to be pretty amusing in itself. J would put all of the decoratioins h put on around the very bottom of the tree or on the back of the tree. lol And he would line them all up. It actually looked pretty funny, but he was trying to hard and enjoying himself so much I just let him do it. lol K could almost reach the top so he liked to hang everything up as high as he could reach. So the tree looked pretty good at the top and the very bottom, but the middle was a little bare! lol But it’s all good, I did a little rearranging when they were all done and it looks just fine now. 😉 And wouldn’t you know it, my loving little boy made his Momma cry tonight. See, we have a tradition in our house. Every year we each get a new ornament for the tree that has some significance to that person (i.e. from a special trip we took, special accomplishment, etc). We started that the year we got married and have continued on with it every year since. So our tree has ornaments that symbolize our first Christmas as husband and wife, our trip to Australia, our first new house, expecting our first baby. and then once we had kids it started to include things like each new baby’s first Christmas, etc. Obviously this year we had quite a few new things we could add. E got his first official ornament to add to our tree. J picked out his, which ended up being a truck because, well, that’s just what he picked this year. lol I happened to be looking the other day for something to add as our family ornament when I spotted something I felt was perfect for K. He’s got a real knack for drawing. His teachers have talked ot us about it, he draws ALL the time. Recently they had a career day where they could dress like the career they would like to have when they grow up and K was disappointed because there was no ‘costume’ for him to wear for the job he wanted. His dream is to become an illustrator. He wants to illustrate children’s books when he grows up. And he said he wants me to write the words for the pictures he draws, because all of his pictures come with an elaborate back story. lol But anyway, I found this Hallmark ornament that said "Mommy’s little Artist" and it was a picture of a mouse drawing pictures with chalk on a sidewalk. So I bought it for him. I gave it to him tonight and told him why I picked it for him. He got tears in his eyes as he looked at it and held it in the palm of his hand and that just made me cry. He said "thank you Momma for picking this for me, it’s beautiful and i love it very much". He looked and looked until he found the perfect spot on the tree for it too. I can’t tell you how many times tonight he’s come over to me and gave me a big hug and a kiss and a big thank you for his new ornament and him telling me how much he loves it. He’s been over to the tree just staring at it and looking at all of the details to it. He’s so excited over it he can’t wait to show it to DH and Grandma the first chance he gets! There is never any doubt in my mind why I love that little boy so much.
Once all the tree decorating was done we all got ready to head out. I told the boys’ we were going to go and do something special but it was going to be a surprise. I took them to town to Riverside Park, our first trip of the season. It’s this huge park down by the Mississippi River in town and the Rotary Club decorates it every year with Christmas lights and displays. This year they have over 2 million lights up around the park, and it looks AWESOME! The kids absolutely loved it and were just in awe of seeing it all. Especially the part of the park that they have set up to ‘dance’ with songs played in the park and then you can tune in on your radio to hear the songs too while you watch the lights dance in unison. Pretty cool. Last year we didn’t get a chance to see it and we were all bummed about that. So this was great to see, can’t wait to go back again.
On the way home we picked up dinner. See, on date nights the boys’ get to choose anything they want to eat and we eat it. They chose to want ‘Uncle Donald’s’ tonight. So we stopped at McDonald’s on the way home, grabbed some food quick and went home to eat it. Today was Pajama Day at K’s school, so he wore PJ’s to school all day, but the rest of us weren’t that lucky. So when we got home we changed into jammies and ate our food. And when we were all done we enjoyed the special treats I got for all of us. K and I had hot fudge sundaes and J had a yogurt parfait. That is something we never really do, so it was quite a special treat.
We played for a bit, sang some Christmas songs and some other songs, then started our bedtime routine. Read some books and then it was lights out. I thought I was getting lucky and had all 3 out but not so. E decided he just wan’t ready to go to bed quite yet, so he ended up staying up with me for a bit longer. He’s asleep now so its pretty quiet in the house. I’ve popped in a movie from Netflix to watch while I sit back and relax. Don’t know what time DH will make it home, but for the time being I am enjoying the peace and quiet and am thankful for the awesome evening I got to spend with my boys making memories.