Weekend stuff

Friday when dh got home from work he took the girls & went to pick up Precious (our dog) from his mom's house. I had to laugh, mid-afternoon L asked if she could have candy (we still have candy from the Sea World Trick-or-Treating so they think they need that every time they say they're hungry) and I told her she'd had enough sweets that day, to which she replied, yeah and Daddy's taking us to Grandmom's so we'll have chocolate there. Anyway, they enjoyed their evening with Grandmom and are very happy to have their dog back to torture (I mean love) LOL. Of course having the dog back means I lose the bottom half of my size of the bed (how can a 20lb dog take up so much room?) but I guess her "crumb clean-up duties" make up for it LOL.

Yesterday started out with much fussing, L didn't like the breakfast choices and A didn't want to go to church (SS, yes, church, no) but after much discussion we got that all ironed out & even made it to church in time to be the first ones at SS (this would reflect more on the tardiness of everyone else than on our "on-time-ness" LOL). Now, all I'd told the girls was that I needed them to be quiet & polite in SS, that obviously participation is great, but if they chose note to, they needed to say "no thank you" not be ugly about it or scream about it (we've had some less than positive experiences in SS recently, that they haven't handled well), but either because they were in the mood or thought they were supposed to or something, they actually participated in SS more than they have in the past as well. I think one thing that helped alot is, since we were the first ones there, when Miss M (teacher) got there, she asked them to help her set up the craft, I think that somehow made them feel more comfortable around her, so they were more willing to go up front & such. Anyway, they happily went up front to sing with the other kids, not only drew their pictures for the thank-you chain, but took them up to Miss M, and then helped hold the chain during prayer. And L even volunteered to be part of acting out the Bible story. Church was very long (we left 15 min after it's supposed to be done & the speaker was still preaching) so they got antsy, but overall they did well. Yesterday afternoon we went to a nature center at the SDA summer camp nearby. We'd heard from many people that it was interesting and just never got around to going, so decided to go ahead & check it out. I have to admit, I prefer the Brookside Garden's Nature Center, at least for kids this age. The one at the camp is cool in that it has alot of taxidermied (not sure of the spelling) animals, including some really big ones (a rhino, and a huge Alaskan Grizzly Bear are the biggest), and a large collection of shells and such, but that's essentially all they have. They do have a few live animals, but they're kept in a locked room unless they do a program or something. The caretaker (who was my principal when I was in K & 1st grade) finally did let us into the room to see the live animals, but he didn't seem interested in telling the girls more about the animals, though after a little while he did take one of the ferrets out and let the girls hold it. The girls were as fascinated or more so by the cage full of bugs & worms (that were being "grown" to feed to the snakes & frogs and such) as they were by the other animals LOL. L declared the bugs to be "as cute as a bug in a rug" which is, of course, hard to argue with, but . . .

There's also an observation tower outside that the girls had great fun running up and down (& it's a TALL tower) so they got lots of exercise that way, but weren't overly interested in the "dead animals" inside LOL.

I'd asked my dad to help me out with the boat building project for homeschool, since he has all the tools and knows how to use them, and he decided it was easier to have the girls come out there to do it rather than bringing the tools down here, so since the girls have been asking for months, when our anniversary is going to be (because in some random conversation last summer I told them they would be staying at Mama & Papa's when we celebrate our anniversary (next month)) so they can have a sleepover, we decided this would be a good weekend for an extra sleepover. Mom & Dad took them home from the nature center (which is halfway between their house & ours) and they helped Dad build boats (that use a rubber band to be able to really go) last night, spent the night, and then mom & dad brought them home today before heading to the office. The girls are very proud of themselves that they used the power saw to cut the boats out, and the drill & hammer to assemble it. Mom said the closest they came to a meltdown was when it was time to leave mom & dad's house, they didn't want to come home LOL. And yes, they're already asking again how long till our anniversary so they can have another sleepover.