The (non)Dreaded Two-on-one Date!

(That title was for all you Bachelor fans out there!)

So, we’ve started a new tradition here in the Carter home where when it’s your birthday you get to come out on date night with Mom & Dad! We fequently do date nights with the kids—where one parent will take a child out for special time to get ice cream or something during the week— but this makes it extra special to be with both parents on a weekend night! We had such a fun time with Laycie, and it was a night to remember. Laycie started ‘packing’ for the event early in the week; getting a bag of things to do in the car (as if we were taking some road trip), remembering lip gloss and her purse. She even tried on a few different outfits before making the final cut. With perfume and make-up on, we headed out on the town! She was super lucky to get some money from grandparents this year, so we headed to a magical dream land of possibilities--the dollar store. You should have seen her face as we walked up and down every isle—she couldn’t believe everything she saw was only a dollar! (Don’t you feel that way sometimes too when you’re there? I know I still do!) She made some great purchases, some random ones, and some not so wise ones, but felt like the skies were the limit with choices.

I realized when we got there that I forgot to replace the memory card after downloading her birthday pictures—cursed! So, after much debate, we drove back home after shopping and got it. With my new blogging goals I knew I needed it, and I was glad I did! Our next stop was to a roller-skating rink here in Liberty!

Don’t mind the random ambulance that was there; some lady broke her ankle and we got there in the midst of it all. (Lance was just glad he wasn’t on call at the hospital!) We laced up our skates and headed out on the floor!

Okay, so I have to throw this in; I gave the camera to a lady to take our picture, she was too nervous so she gave it to her husband, he took it and upon reviewing it and handing it to me he said, “Well, I didn’t quite get the little one in it; is that okay?” Really? I pretended it wasn’t a dumb question and suggested maybe he take another one. He then took a pic of the back of some kid’s head. Finally we got something we can use!

I wouldn’t say Laycie’s a good skater, actually if she wasn’t listening I would even call her a really bad skater, so we each took one of her hands and held them the whole evening, which actually made it all that more special. I wish I could have held hands with Lance too, but then we’d be skating in a little circle and that’d be weird….

Lance and Laycie won the circle game they played there and won two free drinks! Way to go! (I was so close to winning too…)

The Family Fun Pass we got for the night included popcorn too, so it was a party! After a couple hours our sore feet told us it was time to go, so we headed off to get some food. We went to Stake n’ Shake and enjoyed yummy dinner (finally at 9:15pm!) and Laycie got a double chocolate milkshake—Mmmm!

We met her goal of getting home past 10pm and told her to quickly run upstairs, slip on her pjs, and get right to bed. She did just that and when I went up a couple hours later to go to bed myself I checked on her and this made me smile:

Now, all of you are probably thinking, “Okay, that is a very average (maybe even less-than-flattering) picture of a sleeping kid. What’s the big deal?” Well, only a mom would notice that amongst her hurry to get into bed, she managed to take time to change her hair-bow to match her pajamas Now that’s truly a lady!