Date Night!

This picture really has nothing to do with the date night,
other than it was taken right before it...
We just have laughed that we both wear the same(ish) shirt
for the majority of our time. :p 

The best part of being married is that you're basically always having date nights. You need milk from the store? Have him open your door and call it a date. The car is out of gas? It's a gas date! You need to take the trash out and get the mail? Hold hands, it's a date! (you get the idea... :p) Actually I learned about making the little things into dates from my mom and dad. When we lived in Circleville they had their traditional 'trash dates'. Sounds romantic, right? ;) Whenever they had to take garbage to the town dump, they'd leave all of us super eager children home, and call it a date! I'm sure they drove around a little more, or got a treat at the gas station or something too. But we all knew that even though my dad loves us very very much, we won't come between him and mom. ... Haha that used to make me so mad! I guess I thought I was being left out. I wanted to be someones number one! Which brings us to yesterday, because as of August 10, 2012 I am someones number one. :) And we go on sign up for a gym membership dates sometimes. (And by sometimes I mean... only just now. So I don't stay a fatty for life. :p)  I worked yesterday, and it was SUU's study day before finals week so Matt got some much needed sleep after his noc shift until he had to go do an ambassador tour. When I got off of work at 3, I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner.  (I have a confession. I've totally fell off the bandwagon of being a good, prepared, frugal housewife. We've eaten out waaaay too much in the past month. All because I haven't been too keen on the idea of entering Wal Mart. It might be a new phobia. ;) ) So, I called Matt and we decided that we'd make pizza after we went to the gym to look into their membership prices.  Let me just explain to you why I absolutely hate signing up for the gym. Apparently it's necessary to ask me how active I am "currently". And ask me what my goals are for signing up at the gym. (Well... technically I am 'currently' sitting in your chair filling out this stupid paper telling you all my body insecurities. As for my goal... well. I mean check out these love handles. I'm hoping they'll find someone they like better here, and leave me alone?)  Then, if that's not enough, they've got to try and sell you on paying for someone to personally tell you why you're fat and what you're not doing to fix it. And then make you do so many squats you puke. (Ha! Matt's native trainer wannabe at the park... heh heh... ok so you had to hear him tell it. Hil.ar.ious.) So. Once all that's done, your signer upper man takes you on a tour of a gym, because by looking at you he just knows you have no clue what a treadmill is, or weights, or anything of that sort. ;) And since you're in your Sports Authority work clothes still, everyone looks at you like you're the greatest example of a walking contradiction. Which is mostly true for me at that job. ("Hey can you tell me the difference between these golf clubs?" ".... um... well I recommend the cuter one?" ;) Haha ok so it's not really like that. But I'm probably the least athletic of everyone working there. But I can smile and be nice to customers so they hired me anyway.) And then... here's where they win. And then they tell you they have this amazing student rate that ends up being half the price of other gyms per month. Yeah. We signed up right then and there. No praying about it, no lists of pro's and con's... we're cheap. They sang the song of our people. So, four months of payment in full and a few thousand signatures later we were driving home to make the pizza! Being frugal, by making our own dinner! However, once Matt realized that dough has to rise for more than 5 minutes, he suggested Little Caesar's  because his stomach would probably implode if he didn't eat within the next ten minutes. :)  That's how we ended up on a blanket outside our house, soaking in sunshine and discussing how we eat out too much, scarfing down our Little greasers and planning our work out for the next day. I guess we bond over irony.
After we ate, Matt got up to play with some kids toy that got kicked over our fence and never retrieved. One of our Northfield neighbor boys was playing by himself shooting some hoops. (poor only child kid... he's always trying to get the men on our row to play with him. :) ) Matt kinda smiled at me, and then kicked the ball right to the little boy. So of course the little boy kicks it back, and goes back to shooting hoops. Matt kicks it right to him again, he kicks it back, and kinda watches to see what Matt does next.  One thing led to another and suddenly they were in a rather competitive soccer game. :p When the little boy came up to Matt and stole the ball from him, Matt made some sort of approving noise, and the little boy's response was, "What? I've played soccer for four years you know!" grinning. :) (And I'm wondering if he started playing when he was two? Clearly I'm not good at guessing ages.) They bantered back and forth for at least 20 minutes before Matt decided he had to quit and do homework. :) But I got some pictures of their games, and I promise, they looked better on my camera. :p I bet if I had gotten a DSLR for Christmas they'd look marvelous. ;)

Showing off of course. :)

Look how gorgeous the contrast is
between the brand spankin new green leaves
and that beautiful sky!

Trying to get the little boy's attention

And reelin him in. ;) That little boy was just so pleased to
play with someone who thought he was so cool. :) Matt
really played, but let him win a little too. :) 

I know it's blurry, but I love it because you can see how
into it the little boy was. :) 

Look at his face! Cute huh :)

I didn't notice at first, but after a while I could
tell that the little boy (I really need to figure out
his name) would mirror what Matt was doing
a lot of the time. :) It was cute to watch.

He seriously put his whole little heart and soul into playing. :)

Haha! After Matt's somersault-with-the-ball-in-his-feet trick. :p

And then he brought in his real live soccer ball. And things
got serious. ;)

...and then morphed to basketball?

I've got to give him credit, he sure kept up with Matt. :) He played with everything he had! It was so fun to sit and watch how cute Matt was with him. He pushed him to play hard, but let him beat him still in a way that made the little boy feel like he was the best soccer player ever! :) Matt's going to be a cute dad someday.

In other news... this month I made banana bread because we NEVER eat the bananas that I keep buying. You'd think I'd catch on. But nope. I bought bananas again and we now have three very ripe frozen bananas for another loaf of delicious bread. :)  Here's the recipe I used. It turned out super moist and delicious!

Also, Matt decided that for the week before conference he'd grow out a mustache. Oh bless their hearts. Men and their mustaches. ;) Of course I had to document it, and of course he wouldn't just take a normal picture. So here's his really close up mustache picture. Haha he's a cutie, right?