Fearless sheep sheering and date night

Silas, looking on as Blu the sheep gets "shaved."

I wasn't all together sure how Silas would manage the sheep sheering this year. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that he's been dealing with an understandable fear of sudden loud noises, like vacuum cleaners, and sheep baaing. I was afraid that the combination of the sheers and the sheep being forced into awkward positions would really freak him out.

That ended up to be totally unfounded, however. Perhaps it helped that for days leading up to the sheering, I talked up the event, saying that the sheep were getting shaved, just like daddy shaves. When the moment arrived, he didn't shy away at all and in fact, we hung out and watched all four sheep get "shaved" even though the process took well over an hour. What a brave kiddo! For more pictures and to watch a video I took of the sheering, click here.

In addition to it being sheep sheering day, yesterday was also my birthday. It truly was a wonderful day. After Silas' nap, we took a hike in one of the local forests. We walk in the woods all of the time but haven't been to this part of the Grand Forest, as it's called, in quite a while, and it was just beautiful.

In the evening, something most remarkable happened. Uncle Patrick came over to watch Silas so that Drew and I could actually go out to dinner, sans child! We went to my favorite restaurant, Shima Sushi, and managed to spend a delightful hour and a half on our "date." While this was a special thing to do in honor of my birthday, we might just have to make date night a regular (or at least semi-regular) occurrence. Wait, didn't I say that same thing last July? :)