This morning I asked the kids what we should do with our day and Lex immediately said, “We should stay home and get caught up on our rest!” With the cold and the rain outside, I was fine with that plan. It was a weird, nice, quiet day. The rain was falling, the sky gray, the day chilly. One of those days where 6am looks remarkably like 11:30am. The kids played really well together. I got a lot done (mostly in the kitchen!) and the day just flowed. Around 11:45 I realized it was lunch time. Like I said, looking out the window it still looked early. The sun never broke through.

We read the paper, made some music, and just hung out.

The mail came early and I was nominated to go get it. Lex already took his turn in the rain to get the morning paper and Eve isn’t tall enough to get the mail, especially in the rain. The mail consisted of a bit of junk mail plus three magazines! The kids both know that “it’s a good day when there’s a magazine in the mail.” Today was an extra good day because Lex got his first issue of SI Kids and he was thrilled! Eve got Highlights and I got Oprah. They both plopped down and read their magazines and, in hindsight, I totally should have joined them. But alas, I kept going with my busywork.

Lex loves his magazine

The kids were playing so nicely together I contemplated skipping quiet time, but they got a little fussy towards the end of lunch so we stuck to the routine. Eve up in her room with an audio book and Lex in the office with blocks and his new magazines. When I let Eve listen to an audio book it’s almost impossible to get her down again before the book is over, so she spent 2h21m upstairs this afternoon listening to Beezus and Ramona, a book I don’t normally let her listen too :) Lex got done with his quiet time and decided to make a tic-tac-toe board out of blocks. Then made pieces. Then found a cardboard box and decorated it (very thoroughly!) and used it to store the game in. He gave me a “tour” of the box and I’m going to try and get him to do it again on camera. It’s so cute.

After quiet time I set the kids up to paint a birdhouse Lex got for his birthday. It was actually a kit and they built it last week with a babysitter and Eve has been asking every day if she can paint it. Today seemed like a good day.

Notice how Eve puts on a smock (two layers) while Lex takes off his shirt (zero layers). That's just how they prefer to paint.

Just as we were cleaning up our painting mess I got a call from a friend asking if we wanted to join her at Panera Bread for dinner. I guess the kids were rested enough because they both jumped at the idea! :) We went out in the rain, had dinner, and headed home.

Dinner tonight was Lex's treat :)

Baths, story (I am the WORST story reader at night, I constantly drift off while reading, the kids are so sweet and patient with me), and bed. Lovely bed. I should have crawled in bed too, but instead I came down to finish cleaning the kitchen and do this blog post (and waste time online, of course). But now, off to bed!

The only downside to the day is that poor Alan had to head south again for work and family. He has been a busy guy lately. Hopefully he’ll get some down time soon. We were happy he joined us at the ice cream social last night. Half of Lex’s class was happy too. He played tag with them for a looong time and they all loved it! Lex kept calling, “I love you dad!” as he ran by :) It was sweet.