Time well spent

We went to Naomi's favorite playground ever the other evening after dinner, before bedtime. It has been named by Naomi the "Dolphin Park" because of the 1970's era dolphin-like swing she so loves. Naomi can make the swing go all on her own. I think she feels pretty proud of herself for that. She's so good on it that she gets it going pretty fast and then puts her feet up, like we used to do on our bicycle handle bars. There is also a big twisty slide and a fast short metal slide. Naomi is an old pro at them all. Recently she's been testing my reaction time by climbing to the very top of this thing made for climbing. But she's only two and she's a little bit like a cat, climbs up fast and well and then falters a bit on the way down. She's brave and prefers I keep my distance but I can just see it all turning South if she missed a step one of these times and fell about 6 feet to the ground.

James is thrilled just to be outside. He's becoming a great people watcher. Other children are fascinating to him. He will stare a at a child nearby and be all smiles and exciting sounds. He also loves swinging. James has been sick with a cold for what seems like forever. Poor baby. I hate when my kids are sick, especially babies. I guess we are entering the season of sickness.

But on to better topics- We has some friends over for dinner today, Ashley and Jess. It's always good to hang with them. We always seem to talk to them for forever, I love it. Zach made a very delicious pot roast. I'm so happy to say that we can now officially re-create my parents Sunday dinners. Mashed potatoes (using the Bosch to "whip" them), homemade gravy, a tender pot roast, lots of veggies, (we needed more today though), a green salad and cookies for dessert. The cookies are most definitely a Champlin thing though. A Z&T Champlin thing would have been to have grapes or some other fruit. I was missing it today.

I made some Chocolate Quake cookies, Ash helped me. They turned out pretty good. The recipe is from my all time favorite cookie book. It's called Got Milk? The Cookie Book by Peggy Cullen It's fabulous. Really. I've made the best cookies ever from her recipes, everything form the classic CCC to sugar cookies with royal icing to divinity. I always double the recipe and it's a good thing, the cookies are usually gone by day 2.

Tomorrow starts another week of who knows what for us, but I'm sure we'll be busy and tired and cranky and happy and everything else in between too.

All ready for church today.