wednesday

What a fun morning!
We had a date set up to meet some new friends at the park... Sarah is a mom I met and chatted with a couple of times at MOPS who has a six-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son (and a cutesy little baby) and they live fairly near us. We decided to try and get the kids together this summer to meet and play with another chance for us grown ups to chat for a bit, so we made a date for the park this week. We were there for almost four hours today!

The kids hit it off wonderfully and they were off on their own almost the whole time. Sarah and I chatted easily about everything from tattoos and tans to babies and birth control. Church stuff, family stuff, kid stuff, vacation stuff, life stuff. I had a really good time. It was odd, but I feel like I talked more with her -whom I've basically just met- about more real things than I have with anyone in a long time. I miss that real chatting. It was nice to hit it off and talk so easily with someone new. It seems we have a lot in common.

The kids had a great time.
Savannah and E camped out on the playground under the castle play structure making up a little "Girls Club" complete with a secret code to get in their hideout. They found little wooden wheel type things that they turned into their "friendship tokens" that they traded and each took home. It's so fun to see this older girl type play these days... lots of chatting whispering and giggling and hanging out in hideouts making up scenarios and such rather than running around and playing active things like the little boys did.

The boys.... were such boys! After we ate our picnic lunch and they were bored of playing in the water sprinklers, they hung out down by the pond together. They must have spent at least an hour just throwing rocks into the water. Then they found sticks and went "fishing". They were all over the bank exploring everywhere, digging rocks out of the dirt, racing up the hill, and I don't know what they were talking about, but they spent close to two hours down there on their own with Sarah and I just looking on from the picnic area.
I meant to bring my camera and ended up forgetting all about it in the rush of a morning we ended up having. I was bummed I didn't have it though, watching those two boys, heads bent together looking for just the perfect rock to throw or hunting for the perfect fishing pole. Two little boys, wet from the sprinkler, brown from the dirt, shirtless and barefoot, having a blast looking for fish and frogs and running up and down the bank.

But no pictures.

I think it was really the most fun for Sawyer though, and I hope we can get together again and maybe more often. If I've said this once, I've said it a million times... we have found rare the families with little boys Sawyer's age around here. All the kids in our church his age?... girls. Any friends of Savannah's with younger siblings Sawyer's age?... all girls. Our neighborhood?... all girls and 10-12 year old boys. It was such a treat to spend the morning with a great mom, a girl just right for Savannah and a boy -a real live boy!!- for Sawyer to pal around with for a change (and don't forget the cutesy little baby!).

Sawyer talked about it all the way home and as I put him down for a nap time this afternoon... "Wow, that was a busy morning with our new friends, huh mom!"
It was all 'My new friend A this' and 'My new friend A that'. Pretty cute.

Thanks for the great morning Sarah and family!

Back here at home, we have another new friend:























No, she's not ours.
We just have her for the holiday weekend. A coworker of Ryan's asked him if he was willing to be the emergency contact for the kennel while she was away this weekend. Ryan's reply: "why don't we just take her for the weekend for you?".
Um... we?
Guess who gets stuck taking her for more than half of that time?
Seriously; Faith dropped the dog off here this evening... Ryan left for soccer fifteen minutes later. Fifteen minutes after that? Dog poops in the dining room. :(
So Ryan'll be gone till pretty much bedtime tonight, work all day Thursday and Friday, and finally get a little taste of "taking the dog" on Saturday (and we'll be gone Friday and Saturday evenings and most of Sunday) before Faith comes home to get her Sunday afternoon. Sure, we'll take her!

Really, I'm not bothered by it- the kids love her.
I myself am just sooooo not a little-dog person. My idea of a dog is not something that is half the size of what our cats were. But having this little five pound rat running around is free entertainment for the kids, so I suppose it's all good for a few days.
And I guess she's kinda cute.















Did I mention the kids like her?




I did tell Ryan though that next time he wants to offer my our dogsitting services, he should aim for something a little more legitimate trial run-ish for us like a Lab or a Retriever or something that resembles the size of what we would want in a dog (Great Dane). I've had enough cats in my life, I don't need a hairier yappy hyped up one running around underfoot.