Originally written: 01/06/13

I just had a very nice weekend with the kids, and I'm bored, so I thought that I'd write a long, boring email about it for those of you who are interested in such things.  :)  The highlight for me was a nice walk with the kids to the local public library.  It was cold and drizzly, but we went anyway.  It was about 1.7 miles there and another 1.7 miles back.  I was amazed how well the kids did with the hike!  There was hardly any complaining the entire time!  Though, understandably, towards the end they did get a little whiny.  Michael had a great time counting the number of fire hydrants, Carly enjoyed making me mad by jumping in puddles, and Williamjust had fun talking and asking lots of questions.  We talked about everything from why people had painted arrows on the street, to why its bad to throw trash on the ground.  I was amazed how many topics haven't come up in conversation before that we touched on.  And its not that I haven't talked with them while walking to and from their school many times.  I think it is because usually in those talks we talk about school.  This time we talked about just about everything other than school.  It was very nice.  Other weekend highlights included William and Michael very excitedly telling me what to do in Harry Potter Legos Wii and their distress at my not doing exactly what they said right away (I was taking my time enjoying the game and their frustration), me reading a lot of library books to them, our watching some movies from the library together, and William insisting on being given a chance to learn to play Magic: The Gathering.  (Carly and Michael built two decks for me while William built his own decks.  He won two out of three games.  Next time I'm making my own deck!)  Carly also really enjoyed playing hide and seek (in spite of the fact that my apartment only has like 4 places to hide) and Uno and War and Dominoes.  Which games the boys tolerated with promises of MtG and Wii to follow.  We also had a great time making homemade pizza together.  :)  All in all we had a very nice time together!  They did have a hard time going to sleep at night, but I found a way to remedy that.  If they calmed down I would tell them a bedtime story from memory (we did Goldilocks, the Three Little Pigs, and Hanzel and Grettel) and then I would listen to a few General Conference talks while sitting in the room with them.  Man, nothing puts kids to sleep like listening to prophets and apostles!  ;)