This weekend my family did something that I can’t recall doing in a very long time – we stayed home. I honestly cannot remember the last time that we stayed home for an entire weekend and now that we’ve done it I hope to make it a priority a little more often. We did leave for about an hour to go to church on Sunday and Hubby had to go to work for a couple hours, but that was it. No errands, no restaurants, nothing. We spent time as a family at home.
During our weekend at home, we cooked every meal (if you count making PBJ’s as cooking!). This is quite an accomplishment as we generally eat out (or order in) at least twice on the weekends. Friday night we usually go out for a nice family meal, then end up grabbing fast food as we’re running errands or on our way somewhere on Saturday or Sunday. Even when my mom tried to tempt me with Mexican food and margarita’s I held onto my reserve. Not only did we eat every meal at home, but I also made cupcakes (requested by Zach) and brownies (requested by Hubby) from scratch. This was in part due to the new budget I’m trying to get us on and in part due to my goal of cleaning out the pantry. It is amazing how much food I have horded in there!
On Saturday I spent some time cleaning and organizing the kitchen, putting laundry away, and just general tidying up so that I had the evening free. I spent lots of time loving on my kids and I gave my blog a fresh new look for the second time in as many days. I hated the first version but so far still like this one. (If you’re in a feed reader you might want to click over and take a look!)
As I mentioned above, on Sunday we went to church. We’re currently on the search for a new church (we still haven’t really found one since my dad moved away in June) so we decided to try out a small church in our neighborhood. I’m still a little on the fence about the church we went to. I didn’t just love it, but I didn’t hate it either. I think we need to go a few more times before I can decide. Zach, on the other hand, was asking if we could come back again before we were even out of the building, so there’s that.
Zach really enjoyed playing with the other kids at church, which brings up a question. Do you keep your kids with you during the church service or send them to a nursery/children’s church? I have struggled with this ever since Zach was a baby. I prefer to have my kids in church with me. They make a little noise, but I think that if you want them to learn how to behave in church, they have to be in church. When we first arrived at the church on Sunday we were told there was a nursery available. I thanked the lady and told her that I prefer to keep the kids with me. Then part way through the service the children came up (from the nursery) to assist with a “noisy offering”. The same lady came by and asked Zach to join them which he did happily. Then when it was all over she asked him if he would like to go back downstairs with them. Of course he said “Yes!” so she told me that he was going with them.
I didn’t really mind him going, but I was a little unhappy that the lady totally disregarded the fact that I wanted him to stay in church. I certainly didn’t want to cause a scene by saying he coulnd’t go so I let him go with her and the other kids. If he was acting up or being noisy I would have taken him down there myself, but he was being very well-behaved. I wanted him to stay in church where he might learn something rather than go downstairs where he could run around and play with cars and blocks. I don’t really think that making the child sit still for one hour out of the entire weekend is really that torturous.
Whew, I got off on a bit of a tangent there!
Anyway, after church we headed back home and spent the rest of the day relaxing. I finally got Evie’s Tinkerbell Fleece Tie Blanket finished (that was supposed to be a Christmas gift!) and made her a couple more hair bows, though the electricity went out for a while forcing me to stop that project before I was finished. While the electricity was out, Hubby got called to work and the kids and I spent some time reading books together. Once we had power again we watched some movies and I worked a bit on knitting the “never ending scarf” that I still owe my mom from her last birthday.
I got a little off track, but the whole point of this entry was that we had a really great weekend together at home with very little distraction from the outside world. I wish I could say that we didn’t spend any money, but I did order Evie a few clearanced clothing items online because she’s suddenly outgrowing all of her 12 month sized clothes. It was really nice to slow down for a change and just enjoy being together.
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