exercise (in patience)

Well tonights plan was to get the children to bed and be a couple...so...after dinner, we get ice cream cones (FHE around these parts)
then we are off on a walk (i.e. " you are getting very sleepy, just relax and close your eyes")
Mattie is out in the first 10 mins of walk and liliana is complaining about everything (her normal for when she is about to fall asleep and is fighting it)...but, she is a fighter, so we keep walking. We walk farther then we have yet to ever walk, and she is still carrying on about how tired she is and when are we going to get to her street with her house on it (she wants to fall asleep in her bed). We of course just want to arrive home with two sleeping children and transfer them, and then go about our QUIET evening...well we arrive home, mattie still asleep (mind you she has been sleeping for 30 minutes now in the carrier on jacobs back), liliana stays in the stroller (plan B, jacob will now go running with her as the method to get her to sleep and his exercise). so we carefully take mattie upstairs and the minute we hit her bed she wakes up, I try giving her the 'sleepy' juice, but to no avail, she is up and ready to play (afterall she just had a powernap). I told jacob not to come home from running this liliana was asleep. Well after being gone an hour i hear the door open...liliana comes bounding in and Mattie starts squeling in delight at the return of her noisy sister..tired jacob comes in a little bit later, he has just run over 6 miles (not just any 6 miles mind you, he had to listen to a 3 year old jabber his ear off with "why" questions all the way home).
So I take my 3yr old and get her into bed. I then try to nurse baby to bed and her way of letting me know what she thought about said plans was to give me three bites in a row (oh, the things one endures!!!), I quickly close shop ("I will show her"!), and place her on the floor in my room..she is a happy playing clam (Its 9pm), jacob enters the room and says that he will take her on a walk (again)...so I am hopeful that the baby will return asleep, although I wonder if this is just the children's way of making sure we get some exercise:)