Today begins the other part of the tradeoff that Joy and I have made this year. The first part I talked about in this blog post from Monday. The second part is the midweek version of the trade-off. Joy was interested in getting involved with a Bible study at church this fall, but the one that made the most sense meets Wednesday evening. This would essentially leave me home alone with the kids, and responsible for snack time, and putting the kids to bed. This isn’t a huge problem, I’ve done it on occasion before when the need arose, but I had never committed to doing it on a consistent basis. The trade-off is that I wanted to get back into playing volleyball at church on Thursday nights this fall. I had played regularly before kids, and even sometimes after Abby was born. When we expanded our family, volleyball went out of my schedule along with youth on Wednesday evenings. I had been thinking about getting back into, as another way to keep my aging body in shape. This presented the perfect opportunity.

Joy and I have agreed that we will essentially both get one night “off” a week. I got to have my first chance last Thursday, as volleyball began with some spirited 2 on 3 games. I’m not sure yet that we will have enough players this week to be able to play, but on weeks that we do, I’ll be able to get in some fun and reasonably well played volleyball. (All of the guys I play with are pretty good players, and we try to play good quality volleyball with spikes and blocks.)

Tonight starts Joy’s end of the bargain. She will be heading to church after supper tonight, and I will be hanging out with our three energetic little ones. I’m kind of looking forward to quality time with the kids. I want them to know that Daddy is capable of hanging out with them and taking care of them while Mommy goes out and meets with friends. I also think that it is good for them to be able to play and hang out with Daddy. There have been a couple of other options out there. Joy received an invitation from Grantham BIC to their Sing-and-Play on Friday mornings (which she’s taken the kids to in the past) that also included an invitation to their Wednesday night clubs. While the kids would probably enjoy this, I’m not sure I want to do it. I didn’t agree to watch the kids on Wednesday night with hopes of finding some way to not really have to watch them. At least for now, I think I’ll keep them with me. Maybe we’ll go for a walk around the neighborhood, go to a park to play, or just play in the back yard. The weather is pretty nice this time of year, so why not play with them outside?

All that to say, I’m pretty pumped about a fun evening with the kids. Hopefully they cooperate and don’t make me spend the night putting them in time out. I guess we’ll see. Maybe I’ll have to update you tomorrow on how it went! 🙂