Date Night with Koyle

Let's begin our date night saga at the very beginning. Justin and I have never been the couple that has to get their Friday night date in no matter what. In fact, we rarely go on formal dates. Not that we don't ever do anything together, but that just wasn't something we worried about. We actually spend a lot of time together which I think is why we don't usually feel that need to have 'date night'. (But the inner workings of our relationship is a topic for another day...or not.) But sometimes there is the need to get out without kids. So last year we decided to put together a date night group with some friends. I was quite leery of the whole undertaking and because of my mixed feelings we decided to just do it every other week. That way we could get one real date in and go to the temple each month. It worked out great, except for the fact that I swear the weekends it was date night there was always something that kept us from being able to go out (usually a test weekend). So I felt like we didn't get a ton of benefit from it, but it warmed me up to the whole idea of date night.
This year, after some debate, we decided to do date night again but do it every week. We have 5 families, so you have a whole month between your turn to babysit. There are 8 kids, age 5 and under, and they are all boys! Kind of fun actually. Often our date night consists of running errands that we don't want to do with the kids, and we get some uninterrupted conversation in the process. But we are learning to do other things together too. A few weeks ago we decided that we wanted to use this as an opportunity to spend some one on one time with the boys occasionally. After all, Justin and I don't need a date night by ourselves EVERY friday : )
 So this weekend we took Koyle out on a special date. He choose to go fishing! No surprise there-the boy loves fishing. It was really fun to spend time with him without Matthew interrupting or answering questions for him. I think it was especially good for Justin to spend some happy time connecting with Koyle. He looked so cute all dressed up and I even did his hair for the night.

Of course baby Landon got to come too. He is still young enough that I don't leave him with the babysitter unless we are doing something that I can't take him along.

The water looks nice in this picture. But don't let it fool you, it's really quite gross pond water that always has lots of garbage floating around. (I hate litter.)

Like most kids, his favorite part of fishing is casting and reeling it in. So Justin would get the chicken liver on the hook and cast it out for him and he would hold it for a minute, and then he would turn to me and say, "Can I reel it in?" "Sure, if that's what you want to do," I would say. Then he would turn to Justin and ask, "Can I reel it in?" "Sure, if you want to," Justin would say. "I want to." And he would reel it in. But he wouldn't do it until he had asked Justin first. As the night progressed though he got better at leaving it in longer.

 I love my little boy so much and he is growing up!

 Have to include a picture of cutie pie chewing on his chew stick.

 There was this sidewalk drain thing that Koyle really wanted to stand on to fish. But every time a car drove by on the road behind us he would freak out and run off. No matter how many times we reassured him that the cars were not going to get him there, he was still afraid. He's kind of silly about things like that.

Koyle loves catfish and he really wanted to catch a catfish. We hadn't caught anything all night and almost called it a day but then Koyle wanted to put a bobber on his pole. That was the trick because next cast we caught a catfish! It was perfect. He reeled it in all by himself, but waffled back and forth deciding to keep it or throw it back. Luckily he decided we should throw it back.

Next cast we caught a blue gill (we think that's what it was). Don't mind the creepy picture-my camera did some weird setting thing where it took two pictures at once and put them on top of each other, so Koyle's face is a little...off.

Enjoying life. It was really nice sitting next to the pond enjoying the outdoors and being with Koyle. To end the night we went to McDonalds and got an ice cream cone. Right when we got in the car one of Koyle's favorite songs came on; it was perfect! He joined right in singing all the way to ice cream. I love it when he sings.

 He is pulling his eye like that because he was showing me the blood in his eye-one of his recent fascinations.