Resolutions and Date Day/Night

So I finally made my resolution for 2012: to spend more time with my husband and children.

First, you may be thinking "Dude, it's February." Yeah, yeah. You try making, let alone keeping, a resolution when you're working 12+ hour days trying to get a tax website launched. Go ahead - try it. Lemme know how that works out for you.

Second, if you know the particulars of our daily life in this Wall household, you may be thinking "Is it even physically possible to spend MORE time with your family than you do now?" I've got to admit, I've got a pretty sweet deal. Being able to work from home AND set my own hours is beyond a dream situation. And there are some weeks when we'll go DAYS in each other's company without a break. Unless you count sleeping. Which I don't considering the amount of talking people in this house do in their sleep. :)

But time spent occupying the same space isn't the same as time together, if you catch my meaning. So I've been thinking about it this week and solidified my resolution during my morning walk (yeah, I said it that way to make you think it's a common thing. Don't be fooled.) I want to spend more real time with each member of my family.

So far, for the whole day and a half (I was testing it out last night) I've been trying, it's been going awesome. I spent an hour last night playing with just Speed in his room (Hazel was on her computer or something). Honestly, my back hurt from sitting on the floor that long and my fat preggo belly hurt from him crawling on me, but it was a lot of fun to see him run around and bring me toys and make animal noises and jump on the bed. And I might be flattering myself, but I think he had fun too.

Then today when Jacob's planned trip to the office was postponed, I decided it was his turn. So we dropped the kids off with the in-laws (thanks again, Tevs) and headed out for a lunch date. We just got some gyros and frozen yogurt and talked for about an hour and a half but it was good to have time together, out of the house, just the two of us. We've been slacking a bit on our date nights lately with work being so busy and all, so I think I'll recommit to that as part of my resolution.

Hazel's still a bit harder. For starters, she just doesn't sit still long enough!! That girl is on hyper-speed lately. She'll sit for one book, maybe two and then she's off. Same with songs. Same with toys. Same with about anything except TV shows and computer games. Wonder where she gets that from. ::whistles innocently:: She has been asking me to sit and watch shows with her, so maybe I'll try doing that more often. I wouldn't think that would be a big memory-builder, but she does always remember the last time we sat down and watched the Phineas and Ferb movie together, so maybe it is for her. And everything IS better with Perry.

In the spirit of doing things that are more interactive, we decided to do a family date night tonight. We headed off to the big mall in Glendale (Arrowhead something-or-other) to walk around. It was a LOT of fun.

First thing when we walked through the door, Speed goes "WOW!!". Apparently he hasn't seen that many people in such a small space in a long time. We walked around for a bit and then took a stop in the board game store. The kids thought that was SUPER cool because they had rubber duckies that light up when you threw them on the floor. At least I'm hoping you were supposed to throw them on the floor. Oh well.

Then we headed downstairs to the Lego Store. With those prices, there was no way we were getting anything tonight, but that's ok - it's still fun to look. Hazel wanted to look in EVERY single model window to see what was inside. They had computers at kid level, so you can guess what Speed went for. They do have some fun stuff out. They even had a completed Super Star Destroyer on display. ::drool::

Next we hit up the Disney store. Now, despite having spent a week at DisneyWorld right after Speed was born, our kids are not super Disney fans. Probably because there isn't much Disney stuff on Netflix. Go figure. But from various sources (ok, cable TV when we're on vacation and merchandising), they do know Mickey and several of the other characters. And we do have a small, but growing selection of the good Disney movies. So I wasn't too surprised when they were excited to look at everything but not going crazy. Then they saw the plushes. Then they saw the Perry the Platypus plushes. I told you everything is better with Perry. Then Jake and I saw the "buy one get one free" sign on the plushes. Score!

To be fair to the Disney store, the plushes were quite reasonably priced even without the sale and Jacob had already said he would like to get them each something small at that store. But with the BOGO sale, they each got something medium. :) To further the BOGO love, after a quick stop at the play area (which was CRAZY packed), we treated ourselves to some BOGO Orange Julius before heading home.

Poor Speed didn't make it home conscious as he never settled down enough to take a nap today. But he's very happily snuggled in his bed with his new Nemo, so I don't think he minds. And Hazel is SO excited to "bring Perry to his NEW home" and has spent the night making him "talk" (he makes the Perry noise when you squeeze his paw). The last thing I heard her say tonight was "Good-night, Perry. Now be quiet." I'm thinking it was more than worth it.

Fun day and a fun night. We're off to go watch...something - Jacob hasn't picked yet - to finish out our date night. Gotta say, I love my family. I hope they always know and feel that.