Here is a photo of the boys in back of our new minivan. Believe it or not they decided they each wanted to wear their sunglasses outside today even though it is not remotely sunny. Still, I thought it was a good opportunity to get a shot of the kids and the van. Let me also state for the record that I adore our minivan. It is a zillion times easier to load and unload the kids, the electric sliding doors rock, and it is actually very nice to drive too. I have had several of our friends (with and without kids) comment that they just can't quite stomach the idea of ever driving a minivan, it being too "suburban-soccer mom-2.5 kids-this would be the final death knell for my life as a swinging single guy/gal" and all I can say to them is "Your loss." My feeling is, if someone has seen the bags under my eyes, the food some small hand wiped on my pants that I haven't noticed yet, the humongous diaper bag I am hauling around because I'm relatively sure my wallet is in it somewhere, and the fact that I haven't had a haircut in close to a year now and they still don't realize that I am a mom, they probably aren't bright enough to draw any conclusions from my minivan either. So bottom line, come to the dark side, you aren't fooling anyone anyway.

In other news, last night Andy and I had an unexpected date night, which was a little surreal. Hammie and Fraser both went down for "naps" a little after 4:00 and slept right on through the night. So, when they first went down, I figured I had maybe an hour to myself (Andy was chipping branches for our neighbor) so I rushed up to the attic to do some sorting of items to donate to the yard sale to benefit our local pet rescue group. At about 4:30 I heard the tractor pull in the driveway and went down to talk to Andy. The kids were still asleep so I went back into the attic for another half and hour, and Andy went to the barn. Around 6:00, after we had both showered and Andy was sitting in the kitchen with me while I made dinner we realized that the kids might actually not wake up for dinner. We had an entire dinner by ourselves, we completed sentences and even thoughts, and we were freakishly aware of how quiet the house was. At some point my brain was like, "Oh, right.... this is what it was like before we had kids." After we finished eating we just sat there talking for awhile. There was no chasing Fraser to get him to sit on the potty, rushing to clean up the kitchen so we could get everyone into the bathtub and then brush teeth, read stories, and tuck everyone in.

Now I'm not saying that I wish our house could be like that every night, I'm too accustomed to the chaos that defines our everyday lives to relinquish it completely, but if the kids wanted to pass out at 4:00 once a week, or even once every other week, I wouldn't complain. It isn't that we don't have date nights ever (though admittedly they are less frequent than Andy would like) but they always involve going out somewhere. This sounds like a good thing, but I often find it creates a lot of pressure to have a really good time and discuss really important issues and squeeze every last drop of "date night" blood out of the evening. Maybe because we were home last night, or maybe because it was so unexpected to be without the kids, I felt like it was just relaxing. We didn't do anything special, and I guess that was what made it so special. Live and learn....

Oh, and the one other thing I managed to accomplish this weekend was to add a nifty baby countdown clock to the bottom of this blog (you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom to see it.) Andy, by the way, doesn't seem to find the countdown nearly as amusing as I do. Now who is living in denial?