The Babysitters Club

Ok, I know that I haven't posted anything substantial this last month. It has been incredibly busy; I have taken Elisabeth, Nathan, or myself to different doctors appointments 10 times this month. This was on top of the IHH fun run, 4 straight weeks of auditing in the field (two weeks in Delta), a pampered chef party, carpet cleaners, dinner with our high school friends at Los Hermanos, arranging the transformation of our backyard, getting Elisabeth into a community ballet class, and finally keeping up on Nathan's daily normal needs. I also spent a night with Nathan at Primary Children's doing a "sleep study" (neither Nathan nor I slept that well). I have great pictures of everything and not much time to post! So I promise later that I will actually take a couple of hours and update everybody with everything.

One of the best things that Jake and I have accomplished this month is setting up a babysitter's club in our ward. First off, there aren't many young women in our ward to begin with, but the ones that we have are so busy! If its not soccer, there's ballet, piano, drill, school activities.... the girls just don't have time to babysit. Jake and I feel like we need time to get away from our stress and to remember why we liked each other enough in the first place to get married. There just hasn't been much time for us to go do things by ourselves in the last 8 months without the kids. I was talking to Kristin a couple of weeks ago and she told me how her and Shawn are involved in a babysitting club in their ward. We liked the idea so much that we've set up our own group in our own ward. This is how it works:

We've invited the Okerlunds, Hamericks, Hansen's, and Shumways to participate with us. We are going to take turns watching each other's children while they go out on dates. For example, on October 3rd, Jake and I are responsible to watch all of the other couple's kids while the other couples go on dates with their spouses. We have selected Friday nights as date nights and are having this group every other Friday night. The couple in charge takes the kids from 6:30 - 9:30 p.m and is responsible for making dinner for the kids and making sure that they are taken care of. By babysitting for one night, Jake and I now have 4 nights in the rotation where we can go out and do something by ourselves. In mine and Jake's case, going out by ourselves is a relative term. Nathan will generally be going with us or we will be asking Kathleen or Grandma to watch him every now and again for us. Only Lisa Hansen, who finished her degree in nursing, actually feels comfortable with caring for Nathan. I'm going to take a Friday during the day and teach Lisa what there is to know about Nathan's care.

We're super excited about this arrangement! Everyone in the group is going to have one rotation and then we are going to reevaluate it and make any necessary changes. We've also set a few general rules about sick kids.

I remember as a young preteen reading the babysitter's club books. With this stage of life, this is going to be way better than that club!