last night, chris and i met with our friends, dustin and amanda to go through our parenting “seminar” again. (more on that to come later. oh, i have SO much to talk about)

since the vikings were playing and dustin and amanda wanted to make sure to catch most of the game (chris and i are AVID packer fans), we decided to have everyone meet at their house (superstars included). for our other sessions, the superstars were at one house and the parents were at a different house (the superstars had a babysitter! gee whiz, you guys!).

anyway, as we were watching our video, we could hear the superstars playing with their babysitters in the basement.

and i do mean hear.

john and shawna sounded like they were having SO much FUN! well, EVERYONE sounded like they were having so much fun!

at one point (after amanda went to check on the burning soup–long story), she heard john saying, “okay, so we landed the ship! everyone out to go collect samples!” they were on a mission in space and landing on different planets.

i realized that john and shawna had a lot to teach me about playing.

being that i’m 32 and the heaviness of the world is on my shoulders, i tend NOT to use my imagination. i don’t know where it is all the time. and frankly, since i don’t know where my imaganation is, i quickly get bored with playing.

john is working on getting his masters (and ultimately his phD, most likely anyway) in entimology (study of bugs). so he just used what he knows and played along and made it even more exciting (you know bugs on other planets are WAY more exciting that mosquitoes here in mn; however, john, feel free to figure out how to kill, Kill, KILL them!)

it was kind of a fun (side) lesson to learn last night. part of connecting to my superstars’ hearts (more to come on this, too, as it relates COMPLETELY to our parenting “seminar.”) is playing with them. the little people in our house have value and they teach us how to enjoy moments. and playing with them should be a joy.

SO today, i am going to play with my kids. this is what i know. we are going to set up an office and i will show them how to answer the phone and schedule an appointment with the doctor.

i can do that! it may not sound fun to you, but i remember playing office a lot as a kid. i think it will be fun. i just have to be open that our doctor’s office will be in the ocean (or something like that!).

and for those of you wondering about the no tv thing? we are ONLY playing short videos to do princess pea’s nebs. other than that–nada–and it’s going awesome! bedtime is MUCH more manageable when they are not hyped up on force fed entertainment!