Girls Weekend!

Jacob had to go to a conference last weekend in Nebraska, which I was not excited about.  I am REALLY not good at being alone.  Shortly after we were married, Jacob went camping with his dad for just one night... I don't think he was gone much longer than 24 hours.  But I was so sad the whole time he was gone, counting down the minutes until he'd be back.  I was also in the very beginning of my pregnancy, so I was super hormonal and emotional, and I was really sick all the time, so that made it even worse.

Since then, I've made sure that I was never alone overnight (other than when Jacob was working night shifts back when we lived in Provo, which didn't seem quite as bad, since I knew he was only at work and not very far away).  Jacob went camping with his friends one night this past summer, but the only reason I let him go was because my friend Jess was visiting me from Utah, so I knew I wouldn't be in the house alone.  My sister-in-law was going to come visit last weekend while Jacob was gone, which would have been so perfect, but it didn't work out.  So I was alone with the kids for the first time ever!

On Thursday night, I stayed up way later than I should have making some goody bags and silly little gifts for Jacob's trip.  I had bought a ton of snacks for him to have for the long drive and to snack on at the hotel, and a few of the treats had special little notes to go with them.  I got all the printouts from the Dating Divas website.  (I really love their website... SO many good ideas!)  I wrote a little note to Jacob on the back of each of the printouts before I attached them to their food items.  I wrapped one of the items for each day he was gone.  He got the bag of Donuts and a little card on Friday, a pack of gum on Saturday, and a box of M&Ms on Sunday.  The notes were silly and cheesy, but I liked them, and I think Jacob did, too!

Cheesy, I know.

The gum.  This was his little "gift" and note to open on Saturday.  Gum note printable from here.

Donut printable from here.

 The little card for Friday had the alphabet on the front, but it didn't have the letter u.  Then inside, it said "Missing U".  And I wrote my own little note, too.  The card printable was from here, and the M&M note, which I forgot to take a picture of, was from here. 

All of his snacks!  I might have gone a little overboard... haha.

When Jacob left on Friday, he got picked up by a girl in his grad program (the grad students were all driving together to the conference).  After he left, I thought about how funny it would have looked if we had any nosy neighbors watching... Jacob, with his big duffel bag, driving off with a pretty girl while his wife was standing on the front step, crying. haha  It made me laugh a little... after I stopped crying. :)

Overall, the girls and I had a fun weekend!  We kept very busy to keep us from getting too sad that Jacob was gone.  We ran some errands on Friday, picked up a new animated movie from Redbox, and then went to West County Center to play at the mall play area.  We were going to get pizza and have a pizza & movie night when we got home, but I was starving when we got to the mall so we splurged on Chick-fil-A instead and split some chicken nuggets & fries.

Chick-fil-A at the food court!

 By the way, have you all seen/used those little placemats from Chick-fil-A that stick to the table?  I LOVE them... they are the coolest things ever.  Why doesn't every restaurant have those?

Aleta only lasted a few minutes sitting on a chair at the table.  She kept trying to run off.  I had to put her back into the stroller and buckle her in for the rest of the time.

As we were walking down to the play area, we passed some of those little kiddie rides, and I had some quarters leftover from the last time I went to the laundromat, so I let the kids ride on the trolley.  Naomi loves those rides, and Aleta seemed to like it, too.  There was a little button you could push that made the "ding ding" sound of a trolley, so Naomi had a lot of fun with that.  She especially liked the trolley ride because she's been really into the show Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood lately, and he rides on a trolley.

The kids loved the play area!  Aleta had a little trouble climbing up onto the car to go down the slide, but once she got the hang of it, it was the only thing she wanted to do.  I had a hard time getting the girls to leave when it was time to go home!

Naomi spent a lot of time playing with these toys on the walls.

Car slide!

Climbing Up!

The play area--both of my girls are on the car slide.

When we got home, we all got changed into comfy pajamas, grabbed the movie treats we'd bought at Walmart, and cuddled up on the couch to watch Epic.  The movie was alright--not my favorite.  The girls sat and watched for most of it, but they didn't seem to love it, either.  We all loved having movie night together, though!  I had so much fun snuggling the girls on the couch while we ate candy and watched a movie and stayed up way past their bedtime.  Naomi kept giving me hugs and just being really cute.  I love my girls so much!

Ready to watch the movie!

Saturday, our big outing was to Stuckmeyers pumpkin patch!  I spent hours researching pumpkin patches online and calling around--they can be so expensive!  But I finally found Stuckmeyers, which was only about a half hour away, and there was no charge for admission or parking, and the girls could play on the playground part for free.  They also had a ton of red wagons for you to use, so I got one for the girls to ride around in, and they loved it.  It also made it a lot easier for me to take them around the place.  Aleta is a runner right now... all she wants to do when we go anywhere is run in the opposite direction from where I want her to go.  It makes it SO hard to take her anywhere.  I made her wear our little monkey backpack/leash thing at the pumpkin patch in case I needed it, but since we had the wagon, I really only needed it when we were walking back to the car.

Ready to go!

The girls loved the pumpkin patch, especially Naomi.  I let the girls pick out some little 99-cent pumpkins, which they were super excited about.  There were animals to look at, a big playground thing to play on, and a mini corn maze.  Naomi made a friend while she was running around on the playground equipment, so she had a lot of fun running around with her.  Aleta was too little to really enjoy the place, so I felt bad for her.   She kept trying to climb up a ladder to get onto the playground equipment, but a few feet up, she'd get scared and want to come back down.  She started getting really cranky after a little while, because it was her naptime, and then Naomi threw a huge fit because I wouldn't let her go on the inflatables.  She was so upset, and I felt so guilty having to tell her no, but they cost money and we just couldn't do it.  When we left, both Aleta and Naomi were screaming and crying, and I had to basically drag them both to the car.  At that point, I was definitely wishing I had my husband with me to help me out!

Chickens!

Turkey!

Picking pumpkins

The rest of our weekend was pretty low-key.  I tried unsuccessfully to watch some of General Conference (the bi-annual, worldwide conference for our church) but I could only watch it on our computer, which is in the office, and the kids just wouldn't let me sit in the office by myself for 2 hours at a time.  I was able to watch one session while Aleta was napping.  I painted Naomi's nails while we watched, so that kept her happy!

I had fun plans for Sunday to make yummy cinnamon rolls in the morning, and then later in the day, Naomi and I were going to make some delicious halloween treats for some of our neighbors.  Sadly, our oven broke while I was making the cinnamon rolls, so we weren't able to do any of it!  It was actually kinda scary.  I turned the oven on to preheat for the cinnamon rolls, and it preheated fine and seemed to be working fine, but after they'd only been in the oven 2 or 3 minutes, the oven beeped and "F2 F3" showed up where the temperature/time are supposed to be.  I opened the oven, and the cinnamon rolls were burnt to a crisp!  So I quickly took them out and turned off the oven, but it wouldn't turn off.  The oven coil in the top of the oven was on and just wasn't turning off.  The oven just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter.  I called my mom and then my upstairs neighbor, because I didn't know what to do.  My mom suggested running down to the basement and flipping off the breaker for that outlet, but none of the switches are labeled so I had no idea which one it was. I finally had to call my landlord, who told me to unplug the oven, but I couldn't pull the oven out from where it was wedged between the counters/cabinets to get to the plug, so he had to come over and do it himself.  I was so terrified the oven was going to start a fire... it was SO hot by the time my landlord got to our house.  But he unplugged it, and everything was fine, other than the fact that our house smelled like charred cinnamon rolls for the rest of the day.  I opened windows and even the kitchen door for a while, but nothing helped!

So that was our weekend!  I had a lot of fun with my girlies... I love them so much!  But I hope that Jacob never has to leave us for the weekend again... I definitely prefer having him home. :)