Hot Dates.

When Ellie was a small muffin and Tim and I wanted to go out together (without her) Mimi would always tell her "tell mommy and daddy to have fun on their hot date!" So now, any time two people want to leave the house without the rest of their family members, it's a wonderful "hot date."

This weekend was full of them. On Saturday we had a family evening of going up to the Valley to Fluff and Jasmin's house, where she had made an enormous spread of delicious tapas. There were your usual cheese and crackers (fancy cheeses!) plus four types of potatoes (salted, dumplings, fried) two kinds of palella and Iberico jamon. And then four different homemade desserts, plus all of the snacks contributed by guests. And two types of sangria. It was definitely worth the long drive for the food and the company. The kids are finally at an age where they are happy to take off and play together. This time, playing mostly consisted of running circles around the house. Everyone joked that my kids would pass out as soon as they hit the car, which always makes me twitch to hear because in her entire life, Ellie has never simply given up and fallen asleep. She'll keep those exhausted eyes open for hours, as she did on our drive home. Just because you've been running for two straight hours and it's almost 11pm, that doesn't mean you need to sleep!

She managed to rally in the morning, and she and Tim went out for a hot date to see the minions movie. He reports that it was a pretty dumb movie, but Ellie happily said she loved it, and spent the entire movie curled up against him.

Of course she wore a party dress.

And then the biggest hot date of all - today Mimi picked her up from school and took her out to Yorba Linda for a SLEEEEEEPOVER.

Adam has been stuck hot dating with me. Yesterday we went to the grocery store (whoo hoo!) and also stopped by Childrens Orchard because all of his pants finally fit in the waist but are two inches too short. Today was a more fun date - we met up with Hal and Robyn at the mall and did some running around.

Here he is with his face stuffed full of cheesey-burger, which is his fave. Unlike his sister, who will always ask for the grilled cheese. Bonus: I used social media to get a free cookie at the Nordstrom cafe! I love a free item of any sort, but especially of the baked goods sort.

This is how we dressed Adam for Saturday night. The funny story is, I bought the Favre jersey back in 2006 or 2007, way before we were even close to having kids. I told Tim that even though we weren't planning on any kids soon, it would be in our best interest to buy a Favre jersey while I could still get one for cheap, off the rack at ShopKo. As we all know, between then and now, Favre broke my heart by playing for other teams AND being a pervert, so Lulu had been the only child of mine to wear the jersey (she wore it for Favre's last play off game. And bit me.) But on Saturday, I was able to do some forgiving. So I guess it's not a waste of $12. 

Lastly, the kids have been doing a lot of art projects with Gigi. She has many kinds of markers and colored pencils, and then stepped up the crafting game by introducing pinking sheers of various patterns AND glue sticks. Adam has been very content just gluing scraps to the table cloth, but Ellie suggested to Gigi that maybe they should get something even more fun, so Gigi picked up a bunch of glitter glue. 

It really helped Ellie's creativity blossom. This mixed media work features tons of the glitter glue, a feather, some scraps of skin shed by the iguana at her school, and a little piece of yellow ribbon that she found on a walk. Look for it soon in a gallery near you, because modern art is a wonderful, confusing thing.