:: This Weekend ::

We had a nice, quiet weekend.  It was about the first Saturday that we've been a family in a long time.  It felt kind of weird.  Friday night I got to go have a girls night with my friend Kathryn.  We hung out at her house as her hubby was in Europe for work.  We talked, laughed, did some church work, had a bottle of wine...it was delightful.  John and Chase stayed home and watched Alice in Wonderland, which I had rented from the library. It's interesting as adults now watching these Disney movies, not fully remembering them from childhood.  John said this movie was completely crazy and trippy and just plain WEIRD!!  Guess that is one we will not be purchasing.  We also checked out the Fox and the Hound this weekend.  Chase liked that one.  It's ok, still kind of sad, but maybe she doesn't know that?  Chase had a blast calling herself the fox all weekend and daddy was the dog.


Saturday Chase had a birthday party to go to for one of her classmates.  It was at a music school for kids.  I went this weekend as she has another next weekend and John will take her to that one!  She had a wonderful time. It was a music lesson with different "instruments" like the egg shakers, 2 wooden sticks, teacher playing the guitar, singing.  It gave me some good ideas of things we could do at home.  I'm not ready to sign up for more activity in our lives.  The party theme was cute with brown and pink polka dots.  I love to see her interact with these school friends.  I really do think they enjoy playing together.  Minus the minor scuffles like Chase wants the yellow ball that Suzie has!  

After nap time, I felt like we'd been homebound for days(ironic compared to my earlier comment, right?), so we decided to go walk around the mall and then eat dinner out. Chase loves to go to the mall and look in the pet shop and play on a germ fest of an indoor play area.  Then we ate dinner at Macaroni Grill.  It'd been a while since we've eaten there.  And we typically don't eat at "nice" restaurants with Chase, because it's mostly rushed and not enjoyable wondering if she'll be set off by something.  But, she did rather well.  Not great.  And I felt that we'd completely devoured our food in less than 45 minutes!  But it was delicious, they have wonderful homemade bread, and I got a night off from cooking.

Sunday was my first time to church in 4 weeks.  It was nice to be back in our Sunday School class that we are teaching.  Those kids didn't notice I'd been gone, but I'm glad that I'm impacting their lives anyway!!  We have found that teaching multiple quarters in a row really helps us feel like we are getting to know our covenant kids and they are getting to know us.  We always try to have some discussion about what is going on in our world too, that is always eye opening to me for many reasons.  I enjoyed seeing friends that I haven't talked to in a while.  Chase has new Sunday School teachers which I was thrilled to learn about because they are a very dear family to us and I love that they will interact with her regularly.  We tried taking Chase back into church with us (we've been practicing church at home briefly, but taken a break for the last month or so) and it was kind of a flop.  A friend had given her a balloon, how do you take a balloon away from a 2 year old??  She ended up back in nursery after about 20 minutes.


In the evening we had a fun reunion of our founding church's Pastor and wife.  They now live in Uganda, Africa as missionaries.  They were back for an annual reporting trip of sorts.  We had a nice reception before and after the night service.  It was nice to see other familiar faces of people that have connections to them as well but don't go to our church.  One of our church ladies decorated the fellowship hall so nicely.  She used all of the red and gold colors from the Ugandan flag.  There was plenty of delicious food for all.  I had fun baking a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting from scratch for the occasion.  It was delish!!