camping and a girls' night

as you most likely gathered from the video, john and asher went camping this weekend. friday night our ward held it's annual father's and son's campout. john, as the previous elder's quorum president in our ward had always {for the 4 prior father's and son's campouts} been in charge of the planning, organizing, and execution of this event. obviously not singlehandedly, but still, it was a lot of work on his part...making it literally impossible to try and take our sweet, but very rambunctious, little asher along. this is probably the first year he would have been old enough to attend anyway, and since john didn't have to be running around like a crazy person this time around, it made it even more enjoyable. they both had a wonderful time, in fact, asher keeps asking when they can do it again; and john particularly enjoyed the one on one time he was allowed with our sweet little boy.


meanwhile, ruby and i took advantage of our freedom, and went out on the town. we got pedicures (ruby's very first) with ella and brooke, and then hit up cafe mix where the girls each ordered a cheeseburger and brooke and i both ordered their delectable greek salad with chicken kabob. the girls were so cute together and so fun to go out with. and of course, i loved spending time with my sweet sister-in-law as well.brooke and ella dropped us off around 8:30, and ruby and i decided that since the night was still young, we should hit up a late night movie {which would put us getting home around midnight...and surprisingly enough, we walked in the front door exactly at the stroke of 12:00}. we changed into some comfy clothes, picked up a bunch of movie candy, grabbed our harkin's movie cups, and headed out. the movie we wanted to see was no longer playing for the evening, so we found something else - in retrospect probably not the best idea to take a 4 year old {turning 5 in a month. see i'm really trying to make myself feel better about all of this} to a movie about a girl whose arm gets nabbed by a shark. swimming lessons this year, i fear, may be even more of a challenge than they have been. ruby later asked me if there were shark's at big surf, and then didn't even want to go pick out an outfit in her bedroom for fear that a deadly shark might be lurking in the shadows and ready to strike at any moment.seriously, what was i thinking?

the highlight of the night for me {that i got to relive over and over} was each time that ruby expressed her love and gratitude to me for being such a wonderful mom {her words, not mine}, and for doing all of this for her. isn't it fun doing nice things for your children, especially when you know that they really and truly appreciate it?makes me look forward, all the more, to our next girl's night on the town.



*from left to right, top to bottom:
ruby and i soaking our feetruby barley able to soak her feet and sit in the chair at the same timeruby's feet getting prepped for polishinganother shot of ruby practically lying across the chairthe finished productsruby being carried to the dryer (now that's true customer service)the two of us at our late night moviewe got home super latebrooke and ella getting pampered