Jennings Family: A day out and about

We spent a day out and about as a family last weekend, which is, surprisingly, a little unusual. We try to spare Gavin from the mundane errand running whenever possible, so usually one of us goes while the other stays home with him or one of us stops on the way home from work. It's not very typical that we all go to the grocery store or Target together or even just one of us with Gavin or with eachother. We also tend to savor our weekends at home, since we're gone to work all week, so unless it's a birthday party, planned dinner, or other significant event, we like to hunker down at home and have everyone else come to us!

This was a good weekend though. Friday night I enjoyed some long overdue time with two of my girlfriends. More on that in a later post, including a few photos. We had a great time and didn't return to normal life until mid-day Saturday.

Saturday afternoon I was tired (from the crazy night before) and didn't have any dinner ideas, but wanted to do something. Actually, I'm finding that I sometimes want to make plans, simply to encourage Cliff and I to spend time together because more often than not, when we're both at home, we're not really together. One of us is often playing with or taking care of Gavin while the other makes dinner or hauls wood in for the fireplace or plows snow or folds laundry or works on a project. When Gavin is napping, we usually quickly and individually assess how much we can get done in the 2 hours that he's napping and then each determine which project we're going to tackle. So, time together just having fun doesn't come easily. So... Saturday night, I wanted to do something, but I was too tired to want to GO anywhere and frankly, was enjoying being at home. We decided to fire up the grill and invite my brother and his kids over. It was perfect! My brother and my nephew brought over some smoked bratwurst and hot dogs and Cliff grilled them. I quickly cut up and fried some sweet potato fries and threw together a salad. My nephew Luke and Gavin played and played and played together. Luke is very good to Gavin, who is still learning how to share and show kindness, although learning slowly, I might add!

After cleaning up dinner, we all sat around the table and played Dominoes. We taught Chuck and Luke our new favorite Dominoes game, Chickenfoot. We played until almost 10:00 and then decided it was time to get everyone to bed.

Sunday morning was a nice slow morning. We had peanut butter and jelly smoothies, scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast and Cliff and I enjoyed our weekend morning coffee. Gavin always wants coffee and he actually likes it, which is the scary part. He usually gets a sip of mine and always wants more. We tell him that he needs lots of milk, water, and juice to help him grow and that if he drinks coffee he won't have room for all of the good stuff. We say that we're already grown up so we don't need as much milk, water, and juice as he does. It works so far! And he actually very rarely drinks juice. He eats so many veggies and fruits that we just try to get the milk and water into his system.

After breakfast, we debated about what we wanted to do for the day and ended up hearing that Cliff's parents were going to a collector's estate auction. We didn't think there would be much we were interested in, but we thought it would be something fun to do. There were a lot of neat things at the auction, but nothing we needed. It wasn't an ideal space for Gavin to be, so we only stayed about an hour. Gavin was tuckered out even before the auction started and napped in the truck for about an hour!

The auction did, however, give me the treasure-hunting bug, so we went to the Goodwill and found a few things there! For a measley $2.99, we scored a nice, size-5 Harley Davidson jean jacket with a quilted lining that should fit Gavin for at least a couple of years. It's a bit too big now, but he immediately loved it! For $1 each we also got him a camoflauge baseball cap and two toddler-appropriate movies.

For $0.49, we got a cork strip to hang in our mudroom for Gavin to pin up his artwork and craft projects. And our biggest purchase of the trip was a small desktop radio / cd player for $6.99. We wish there had been two of those since Cliff needed a new one for his office and we would like a new one for Gavin's bedroom.

The day was already fun and, in Cliff's opinion, the only thing that could make it better was a chili-cheese dog! Yep, he's crazy weird like that. He loves chili-cheese dogs and Dairy Queen had them for $1. Gavin had a grilled cheese sandwich and I had a hot dog with onions and ketchup. There's just something about onions and ketchup on a hot dog. yum! We shared some crispy onion rings and of course topped it all of with ice cream cones!! Can't go to Dairy Queen and NOT have ice cream, now can you??????