game night fun

This morning at church, we dropped Dennis off at the two-year-old nursery as usual. We've been excited about his upcoming promotion to the three year old class, where he'll actually get a lesson every week as well as getting to attend the children's worship service. Promotion happens in May, usually, but when we returned to the nursery to retrieve Dennis, we discovered that he'd already promoted himself. The three year old class and the two year old nursery share a bathroom, and the instructors told us that Dennis wandered over to the other class several times and then said "I want to stay in here!", so they let him. They told us he did great, and he didn't want to leave when we picked him up. Had we known he'd moved up a class, we'd have gone on to Sunday School ourselves and let him go to his worship service. Next week, I suppose! They told us he was welcome to continue attending the new class, and I'm so glad! He is definitely ready for church classes, especially since he is learning prayers and begging me to read his bible to him daily--he now insists on sleeping with his bible in his bed at night.

Tonight we visited the Gallmans to have a delicious supper (great job, Ellen!) and let the kids play together. Dennis enjoyed being greeted by their neighbors' goats when we arrived and he and Chloe actually played very nicely together. David and Ellen played very nicely together as well, enjoying her new Super Mario for Wii. Dave and I (who are not very good at video games) played with the kids and then went for a hilly (and dark and chilly) walk around their neighborhood. I think we all had such a good time, and everyone got to do something they really enjoyed! On the way home from their place, we noticed a truck down in the ditch on the side of the road (very deep ditch), so we turned around and went back and David got out to see if anyone was in the car and see if they needed help. He encountered a very intoxicated driver who insisted that he didn't need any help and one scared pit bull. He called the police, and the dispatcher asked us to stay on scene so that they could find the truck. We did, parking just off that very dark and scary road, and we watched as the volunteer firemen arrived, the first one in a car that was soon followed by the big fire rescue truck and fire chief car. Dennis announced the arrival of each vehicle and asked lots of questions and made lots of 'rescue' observations, my favorite of which was "that truck is stuck, Mommy, and it's going to need a tow truck--where is the tow truck? someone should call them". Then two police cars arrived, and we were asked to wait for the county sheriff's department to arrive in case they had questions. We did, and since we didn't see the accident happen, we were free to leave. David got Dennis out of the car and carried him over to see the fire truck and meet the firemen and policemen, and he got to watch as they started the rescue. I am still worried about the dog, who was actually very friendly and sweet once he got out of the vehicle and realized everyone was there to help. I hope someone took him to safety. We left after Dennis observed things for a bit because it was VERY late. Dennis could not have been more thrilled about everything, and he talked about it halfway home before he begged us to pull over and let him get in his 'baby seat' rather than his 'big boy' booster seat so that he could sleep.