We Babysat. Voluntarily!

So for most people that might not be worthy of a blog post title, but for us it’s a pretty big deal.  Nick and I don’t have kids, and usually aren’t kid people at all.  We’ve babysat once in the nearly eleven years we’ve been together. 

Our next door neighbors, who are the best neighbors in the world, have six kids.  Six funny, interesting, articulate, incredibly well behaved kids.  The entire family has been extremely nice to us the entire time we’ve lived here (or, in the case of the youngest three kids, since they’ve been born), and they’re just really great neighbors.  It seems like they’re always doing something nice for us, and we wanted to do something nice for them.  So we came up with the idea of offering to watch the kids.  We thought it might be nice for the adults (Lori and Steve) to go out for a nice evening while we provided a fun evening in for the kids.  They took us up on it, and scheduling worked out a few weekends ago.

We were pretty nervous.  It seemed like a big leap to go from never having watched a child together before to watching six at once.  Go big or go home, though, right?

We both tried to remember what we liked to do as kids, and what we liked and didn’t like about some of the people who babysat us over the years.  We also asked lots of people for ideas and suggestions on food choices and activities.   The things we remembered enjoying essentially came down to being given a choice about things (my control issues apparently aren’t anything new) and having different experiences and activities than what we had at home. 

We decided on tacos and pasta for dinner, and let them choose which, or both, they wanted to eat.  That seemed to go over well.  One of the boys even commented that coming over here was like going to a restaurant because you get to choose what you eat.  We had cupcakes, chocolate and vanilla, for dessert. 

For activities we let them pick out a couple of movies to watch, within the rules they have for movies.  And we decorated t-shirts.  We both loved painting t-shirts when we were kids.  I think puff paint must have been in its heyday then because we both remember that being the thing to do.  We opted for fabric markers instead of paint, but we bought everyone a plain white t-shirt (thanks to Google clarifying the sizes) and let everyone decorate their own shirt.  They seemed to enjoy it, and most of the kids wore their shirts home.  I’m assuming that means they liked them.

Lori and Steve said they had a nice evening, and the kids said they had a good time.  I really hope they did.  We did, even though we were exhausted the next day.  Cats and dogs require less energy!  We’re planning to offer to watch the kids again, maybe a few times a year, so please share any suggestions you may have for fun activities for them.  We freely admit to needing the help.

In case you’re wondering, the pictures in this post have absolutely nothing to do with us watching the kids.  I think it’s a gigantic “NO!!!!!!!!!!  Do. NOT. Even. Think. About. It.” to put pictures of someone else’s kids on the internet without their permission.  So I’m sharing a few more pictures from our visit to the arboretum in February.