Mother-Daughter Date

The other night I took Hannah out for a mother-daughter date. It really is sad to me that she is gone so much of the time at school. She's not really a chatterbox, so I feel like I have to pry information out of her to know what's going on during her day. Nikki threw a huge fit because she didn't get to go with us, but I think that made Hannah feel all the more excited about our date. We had a really good time together. She is really conscious of eating healthy foods, so she didn't want to go out for ice cream. (Can she really be our child?) We decided to go out for smoothies and do some Christmas shopping. In the car she was really excited about finding Christmas presents. She said, "I just love giving to other people. I feel so much joy when I do that. It makes me feel so much better." She is such a sweetheart. We had a lot of fun picking out a present for Nikki. She decided she might need to make a present for Nate because he is a man, and she just doesn't know what a man would like. =) As we were about to order our smoothies, I thought it was kind of cold for that so I asked her if she wanted hot chocolate instead. She agreed to that, but she only took a couple of swallows and said she didn't want anymore. I felt bad because she had told me before that she wanted something good for us and not a treat. After that we took a trip to the library because earlier she had been looking out of the car window at the stars. She started asking questions about the sun since she knew that the sun was a star, and we decided to run by the library to pick up a couple of books about the sun. Then, on the way there she started asking about recycling. She wanted to know if they got all the germs off of the used paper and plastic before they made something else out of it. So, we decided to get a book about recycling too since I couldn't explain the process of exactly what they do when things are recycled. She absolutely LOVED it when we ran across a book about craft projects we could make with recyclable things. I hope she becomes a successful artist someday. (As an example of her art, a couple of Sundays ago during church she took her flower and smiley face stickers and tore them in pieces to make a mosaic picture of a girl beside her house with a sun and grass. Now the kid who usually sits behind us always has to check out what she's making. Anyway, I could write another complete post about her art.) We didn't do anything really big, but it was so fun just to spend the evening with her. I am so blessed to be her mother.