Adult night Out

Ok, so I know it's not really a big deal. An adult night out. But the truth is, in YOUR life that may be true, yet in this household, it's a feat. Finances have been tight, the kids have us running in all different directions and the biggest hurdle of all? A free babysitter! We have 2 grandmas that love to spend time with the kids, but the truth is, since I started working again and have been getting help from them on that front, I hesitate to ask them for more.

We have a great babysitter that we can pay named Kimberly...but she's in college now and her schedule is fuller, plus, PAY being the operative word, it's not cheap to hire a babysitter anymore! So we've been lucky enough to be blessed with our neighbors Jeff and Kelly, who have 2 kids themselves, and are more than willing to trade off free babysitting for occassional date nights. So this past week, we watched their 2 boys (ages 1 and 3) so they could go out Friday night and they took ours so we could attend a wedding by ourselves Saturday night.

Do I feel lucky? You bet! If you haven't figured out by now that our 3 children are a big fat active handful, well let me fill you in....THEY ARE A BIG FAT ACTIVE HANDFUL! Love them to death, but bless their hearts, they just are not known for quietly sitting in a corner and reading a book or 2 for an hour. No, more likely they will pull every book off the bookshelf (over 100) and set them up in the middle of the dining room and create a book fair, which will then suddenly morph into a book house, and then a slip and slide, where they slide across the books in their socks after they have lined them up flat on the ground from one end of the house to the other. Adventurous? YES! Creative? YES! Quiet and calm....uh, my kids? Naw, not their style!

But the truth is, Jeff and Kelly (The neighbors) are willing participants in this kid swap because their kids are a handful too! But they are great fun and crack us up. I guess we just don't have a second thought about their antics cause we've seen it all with our own when they were their ages. And Jeff and Kelly...well, they get a taste of the future while watching ours!

So, it was with much relief that I put on my dress-up clothes, lipstick and perfume and walked out of Jeff and Kelly's front door Saturday night realizing that I was going to have a fun evening reconnecting with the man I love knowing my children were not creating a reputation for themselves with someone who would then never again offer to watch them. Was I worried as I watched all three back their butts up to Kelly's piano and start banging on the keys with their rear ends? No. As I walked out their front door and looked back over my shoulder what I saw was 3 kids that know how to have fun and a couple that were willing to put up with them.

And I saw before me a night on the town with my husband of 16 years whom I love dearly. THANK GOD!