Summer Nights

Besides leaving a neighborhood filled with great people, we were also sad to leave a neighborhood that was flat and conducive to bike riding. 

One of my favorite ways to spend a summer evening at our new place is to bike over to the church parking lot for a nice, flat racetrack where the boys can practice their pedaling. 

On Mondays, we've enjoyed a few Family Home Evenings out back on our trampoline.

I'm determined to keep my parents' lawn looking pristine. I keep joking with neighbors that we have to keep the lawn nice because that's what everyone sees, and people could tattle to my parents if they see the lawn take a turn for the worse, where the inside of the house would be a little harder for them to spy on and report back to my parents. I'm hoping if we keep up a nice appearance on the outside, people will assume we're taking care of the inside too and report only good things back to the landlords.

Jeff and I both enjoy mowing the lawn, so we often battle over who gets the job every week. My parents left us their lawn mower, and we had a lawn mower from our other house, so it's not uncommon to see us both out there, each with a lawn mower, team working our way through the grass trimming.

I can't say I've ever held a baby and been in dress clothes while I've mowed the lawn though, so Jeff definitely has me beat on that one!

My sister and I are trying to take full advantage of our close proximity. We decided to do a date night swap once a month which has been a fun little thing for all parties involved to look forward to. 

Our first date night was spent at The Cheesecake Factory downtown which happened to be right next to where Jeff would be starting his new job a few days after. It was fun to spend the evening on his new stomping grounds and to take a little peek at his new building.

Jeff was ready for a change with his job, and we figured now that we were closer to Salt Lake, we had a great opportunity to explore a lot of different job options that would allow a change for Jeff and a better commute than if he were to stay at his old job. He found a job at Zions fairly quickly, felt good about it, and has enjoyed the change!

I was looking through old blog posts last week and found this little gem. Looks like Jeff is following in Eli's footsteps.

We kept joking that we didn't know what to do without any kid buffers keeping us busy.

I kept obsessively touching Jeff because I wasn't use to having a free hand, let alone 2 free hands!

When August rolled around, we planned our second month's date night on our anniversary. We went mini golfing. 

Then we went to a food truck park where we got some flame licked pizza. 

Then we grabbed a cookie on our way back to the kids. I was on a quest to find as many 8s as I could on our date because we were celebrating 8 years since 8-8-08. 

It's been so fun to spend some summer evenings sneaking away on dates.