Kinda Sad

My beloved and I have some alone time every evening once the children are in bed. Part of that alone time is taken up talking while we walk the dogs. We live on a double cul-de-sac, so we are able to walk the dogs and still have a clear view of our house, the front door, etc. Hard to explain.
Anyway, while on our walk last night, we came across our neighborhood children. They all live within 4 or 5 houses of us. As we were approaching them, all you could see were little lights in the middle of the street. It was already dark out. They were so engrossed in their little electronic gadget that they didn't even realize they were sitting in the middle of the street. Since it's a double cul-de-sac, we don't get any thru traffic, which is great.

My beloved has since told me that the electronic gadget is a called a DS. N*ntendo DS I think. On one side it was kind of funny to see all of them sitting there with these little lights glowing, but at the same time it's kind of sad that they weren't running around playing tag or kick the ball or something. The ironic thing is that my beloved had gone outside a couple of hours earlier with our boys to look for insects and to throw the ball around a bit. Those very same children came over so quickly and asked if they could play. It reminds me that we(my beloved and I)as parents, need to play WITH our children.

I was thinking of doing a week of sharing our family time games, or what we do for family time. This week our evenings are filled with VBS. My beloved and I are both tribe leaders. Our four children make up half of our tribe. I think you get 8 children total. Next week my parents are here. My brother might be arriving the day my parents leave until that Thursday. So if my brother doesn't come, maybe I can start sharing our family time the 27th. If he does come, I will start the following Monday.