Date Night - Race Against the Clock

Jeff and I are dorks. We frequently act like children (it makes life more fun!) and this is a prime example of that...

One Thursday a couple of weeks ago, Jeff and I were trying to decide what we were going to do for date night the next day. We knew we wanted to go out and do something fun, but there weren't any movies we wanted to see and we had used all of our Groupons. For some reason, the internet wasn't working at our house that day, but I promised Jeff I would come up with something fun for us to do without the help of online ideas. After a few minutes of thinking, I came up with the idea of kind of a scavenger hunt. But instead of playing separately and against each other (that kind of defeats the purpose of a date), we would work together and race against the clock. I made a list of really random things for us to do as fast as we could. And there were prizes (to be paid for with my mad money): if we finished the whole list in 45 minutes or less - $25 worth of lingerie; finished in 1 hour or less - $20 Blu-ray movie (for the new Blu-ray player Jeff got from my parents for Christmas); and if we just finished the list in any amount of time - a bag of chocolate covered raisins (Jeff's favorite).

Here's the list:

1. Climb a tree

 

2. Do a cartwheel

3. Climb a pole

4. Do a handstand

5. Jump a fence

6. Feed some ducks

 We kind of cheated by feeding a toy duck at Wal-Mart, but it was too dark to find the real ducks outside so we counted it!

7. Roll down a hill (this was way more fun and hilarious than I remembered!)

8. Slide down a slide

9. Go across the monkey bars

10. Purify some lake water and drink it (Jeff used his little water purifier for the first time in the dark! It's probably a good thing it was dark because that water looks pretty nasty in the light, but we both drank the purified water and it was actually good!)

11. Leap frog across a street

12. Run to the top of a set of bleachers or a stadium (Jeff hopped a fence to run up some bleachers at a middle school)

13. Pet a dog (we may have pet a toy dog at Wal-Mart, but I didn't specify that it had to be a real dog!)

14. Ride in an elevator

We were so excited to spot this elevator outside in the middle of a bunch of doctors' offices right off of the parking lot!

15. Drink from a drinking fountain

16. Share a cookie

A day old oatmeal raisin cookie from the McDonald's in Wal-Mart

17. Get a stranger to say "thank you" (I told a 13-ish year-old girl that her Disney princess sweatshirt was cute as we were running through Wal-Mart. Poor girl looked a little taken aback, but she said thank you)

18. Throw a ball back and forth 20 times without dropping it

19. Jump off of a swing and land at least 10 feet from where the swing is when it is still 

 I forgot the camera and Jeff's iPod Touch doesn't do so well in the dark, but Jeff took a flying leap off of the swings at the park in front of Ben and Caitlin's house. It was a solid 12 feet!

20. Find 10 snowmen, 10 Santa Clauses, and 10 Christmas trees (we couldn't believe how fast we did this just driving through a neighborhood!)

21. Do the macarena (We did it in unison. Good thing we were in a dark parking lot where no one could see us)

22. Kiss under mistletoe

 Done!

We finished every item on the list in 55 minutes (we got stuck behind a sloooow tractor on a one-lane road for about 5 minutes, but we went really fast otherwise so I'm not sure that we could have made up a whole 10 minutes!) - Inception on blu-ray it is! And we got it for way less than $20! Sweet!

Lately

Here are a bunch of random pictures from mid-December...

The kids - especially Bethany - think it is so fun to walk around with Luke's laundry hamper on their heads.

Becca typically doesn't join this game by choice. Bethany insists and Becca just goes with it.

Little Luke

Becca decided to climb into the hamper right when Luke was picking it up. He didn't appreciate it.

But he made the mistake of putting his fingers near her face when he tried to push her back out. She bit him. That girl has a bit of a biting problem -at least when it comes to Luke, she does. Those two are the best of friends and the worst of enemies. Fortunately, they're mostly friends.

I couldn't believe how well Luke kept up with Bethany as they ran back and forth across the floor together! They didn't trip once!

The kids and I go to Chick-Fil-A every Wednesday morning for a free playgroup. There is face/arm painting, story time, and balloon animals. We also play in the play place and get ice cream. The kids love it! On this day, Bethany decided to be a pirate! 

All that paint and glitter wasn't easy to get off. Bethany looked like she had a couple of black eyes when I washed her face before nap time!

Happy boy on an ice cream induced sugar rush

Funny girl

All three kids love to play Hungry Hungry Hippos. I love how Luke lies on his stomach to play.

Luke decided all on his own to start belly bumping Becca! He and I thought it was hilarious, but Becca didn't agree.

Yo Gabba Gabba! is hands down the favorite show amongst the kiddos!

Cute little red-nosed girl still getting over her cold.

Sometimes Christmas packages come with bubble wrap, and that means hours (okay, more like several minutes) of fun!

Luke laughed and laughed while the two of us ran, jumped and danced on the bubble wrap.

Luke's wrinkly old man foot after a long bath

My visiting teachers brought me the cutest little mani/pedi set for Christmas (my favorite part was the foot-shaped finger nail clippers). These toe separators came with the set. Luke wanted to put them on his fingers, perhaps to try and use them like brass knuckles in a fight with Daddy.

Luke loves our pretty Christmas tree.

Luke "helped" his daddy fix the dvd disc changers one Saturday morning.

Saturday, the 10th was our ward (church) Christmas party. We met this cute girl and her family there. They shared their blanket with us when we forgot ours (each family was supposed to bring a blanket to sit on).

Love that little button nose!

Luke stole the girls' goldfish and demanded we open them for him.

Luke tried out another family's blanket before agreeing to move to Ben and Caitlin's.

The decorations for the Christmas party were outstanding! All of the walls were covered with something like this. If someone in our ward painted them, I am seriously impressed!

Jeff and the babies. (Becca's foot was caught in the blanket when I took this picture).

Every event in this ward has an awesome turnout!

Dinner was delicious, but Luke refused to eat. He was so grumpy that we had to leave early (fun Uncle Ben played with him in the hall for a minute to cheer him up). That night, he threw up in his crib. Apparently, the poor little guy wasn't feeling well. That being the case, I'm surprised he laughed when Ben swung him around upside down instead of throwing up on him!

 Luke still loves watching football with his dad!

The kids and I walked to a park one Tuesday morning. All of the kids love to go for walks and they love to play at the park.

Playing with the wood chips

Bethany was in a very easily offendable mood that day. Here she is outraged that Luke knocked some of her wood chips onto the ground.

This trip to the park ended in the most ridiculous crying fit. It was so crazy, all I could do was laugh. It all started when Luke knocked some of Bethany's wood chips onto the ground. She responded by shoving him and he hit his head pretty hard on the wooden playground. The poor baby started crying really hard. Obviously, Bethany was in trouble. I grabbed her and sat her down in the stroller. I told her we were going home because if she was going to play like that, we were done playing at the park and she needed to stay in the stroller the whole time (she usually likes to run in front of us some of the time). Bethany started bawling. Luke was still crying and then, Becca started to whimper. I tried giving Becca her sippy cup to calm her down, but instead of drinking it, she defiantly threw it at Bethany and hit her in the head. Bethany started to cry louder. I said, "Becca, no." Well, that set Becca off. Now I had three sobbing toddlers on my hands. I just said, "Okay let's go home and get some lunch" and started pushing the stroller with the two girls in it and Luke on my hip. Everyone quieted down after a minute, and then it was a mostly silent walk home. During lunch, Bethany promised to be nicer and not push Luke anymore. And she kept her promise. Everyone was much happier after naps. Thank goodness!