while Deric was away

Two weeks ago, Deric traveled to Ethiopia for almost a week. He went to scout out our friends' mission work as part of the process for our church to start supporting them. Usually when Deric's gone for longer than a weekend, Jake and I leave town too. But Jake's not such an enjoyable passenger in the car anymore, plus all of our family members were pretty busy. So I braced myself for a long week flying solo and prayed for extra energy. And we had a great week together! It went faster and was much more fun than some weekends Jake and I have spent on our own. For starters, Jake slept until at least 8:00 every morning...quite the answer to prayer for extra energy! Totally ok with that, especially since I stayed up late every night enjoying the time to myself. I also froze a lot of leftovers before Deric left so that cooking (and therefore cleaning) was minimal, which made a big difference.

Deric flew out on Thursday night and we spent Friday morning watching a friend of Jake's for a few hours. It worked out great because Jake loves to have people nearby, so the two of them kept each other entertained and I got a few things cleaned up and done around the house. At one point, both boys helped our neighbor pick up sticks in his yard and he just sent them back home when they were finished. (I plan for this to happen quite a lot in the coming years! Its good work for Jake, plus those little bodies are much closer to the ground for picking up thousands of sticks!)

On Friday night, I thought it'd be fun to make thumbprint cookies with Jake since he's recently learned how to make his handprint in sand/dirt/etc. He always enjoys baking with me and he really loved trying to roll the dough into balls, just like Playdoh. While the cookies baked we "made" pizzas, aka simply topped the premade pizza crusts and called it a day. Another winner for ease, entertainment and lack of dishes to clean later!

Saturday was "National Talk Like a Pirate Day" and Krispy Kreme was handing out free donuts if you talked like a pirate, so we stopped in after breakfast for a donut. I had prepped Jake for it and he had "Ahoy, matey!" ready to go, but the employees were so busy handing out dozens of donuts to each family dressed up like pirates that they just handed us our two little donuts and sent us on our way. (I was definitely tempted to dress Jake like a pirate for a dozen free ones, but then I thought: no ones around to eat those donuts with me, so I'll just end up eating like eleven donuts. No thanks.)

After donuts, Jake and I went to the toy store to spend some leftover birthday gift cards that he had. We (I) picked out a cash register for him that will go well with the play kitchen we're building. Jake's got so, so many trucks and trains that I would like for him to have a better variety of imaginative toys. I'm hoping to scale down the amount of vehicles we've got and introduce things like a doctor kit, the cash register, costumes, etc. that will encourage him to pretend more.

Apparently I used up all my fun ideas towards the beginning of our time, because the next couple days definitely weren't full of donut runs and toy store visits. We did have lunch with friends, visit the park and play games at home and somehow the time passed easily and quickly. I think one reason our time was so enjoyable is that we didn't have anything going on while Deric was gone. So I wasn't split between Jake and getting dinner or errands done; we were able to go with the flow and eat cereal for dinner if we wanted (which we did). ;) We're always glad when Deric comes home, but I'll remember this solo week pretty fondly.