Gwen's 1:1 Day with Mom and Dad

I have been so excited to have a 1:1 date with Gwen. It has felt like she's really needed it lately. I realized she's been overlooked a bit, but mostly because she's shyer and just prefers to be in the background rather than front and center. However, with all that I knew she'd benefit from having some good dates.

I decided I wanted to take her to the aquarium. When we got there, I knew it would be best to let her lead the way. She kept saying she didn't want to go to the shark area because sharks were scary and I thought that was funny because it's my favorite spot, so I just let her decide. I realized she doesn't have a great sense of direction because we ended up where the bees are several, SEVERAL times haha. But she seemed to really like leading the way and deciding where we went. I did help her a couple times, where I told her "If we go this way that's the jelly fish" so she'd go that way. 

I ended up convincing her to go to the shark area and she loved it, which I knew she would, so that was a win. When we were there, it was getting close to lunch time and I was getting so hungry, so I asked her if she wanted to eat, and she said she wasn't hungry yet. We walked past the little food area, and she asked if that was where we were getting lunch, but I told her no, we'd get lunch somewhere else. She then decided she wanted to take the elevator upstairs. When we did, she saw tables and said she wanted to eat there so I told her we could go get a snack at the food place and bring it back up to eat. We got a cake pop for her and some chips for me (the garden salsa sun chips). Her cake pop was actually really good, but she also wanted to have some of my chips too haha. After that I convinced her we should go get lunch, so we went to Penny Ann's Cafe. I heard so many good things about it, so I was excited to try it. 

Oddly enough they sat us at the counter, rather than a table. I think they tend to do that with parties of two because there ended up being a few of us by the time we were done. I got Gwen a grilled cheese and I got a burger. Mine came with a pickle, which I love, and Gwen asked me for a bite and ended up eating more of that than I got haha. We finished up and headed home and Gwen kept saying she had such a fun day with me. I was SO happy. I think her getting to choose so much of where we went made her come out of her shell a bit more and gave us some good bonding moments.

I got home and we put the girls down for a nap. Poor Cara caught pink eye and has been so goopy in her eyes, so sleeping is good, but she has a hard time waking up because her eyes are gooped together.

After their nap Larry took Gwen out. He decided since we had SO many Nickel City cards and she didn't get a ton of time to play at her party that it would be fun to take her to do that. From the sounds of it they also had a really great time. Especially since she could decide what games they played, and he'd play with her and only her. There was no split attention. After that he took her out to Leatherby's for dinner and ice cream. 

They got home right before bedtime and Gwen kept talking about how she had so much fun. They came home with some fun little prizes that she couldn't wait to show Cara. 

I absolutely love that we've started doing 1:1 dates with the girls (we aim to do 2 a year for all kids). They seem to love them, and I look forward to how it helps us bond with them in the future. 

Thanksgiving 2021

Happy Thanksgiving! I really am beginning to love this holiday, I love the food, the family, the parade, all of it! 

I decided I wanted to make a big breakfast for the day since that would give us a good start to the day, make it so we ate a light lunch, and then we'd be ready for a big dinner. We made pancakes, yum!

This year we got a little extra bit of parade because I found it starting at 7 on one channel, and then realized the one I was looking for was the one that started later on another channel, so we got an extra hour of parade...and I didn't hate it. The girls really loved seeing the different balloons, especially Lucy (everytime a balloon came on she'd point and yell out like she was trying to tell us "Hey! There's a big colorful thing on the TV!! Look! You're going to miss it!" haha). It was such a great start to the day.

After the parade we let the girls play and draw and color until lunch time. We ate a light lunch and then put the girls down. I made our cobbler to take to dinner and then took a shower and did my hair and got ready for dinner.

We got the girls up and dressed and brushed so we could head to dinner at Grandma Cameron's. We got there a little before dinner so we could visit for a minute. We had a big dinner that the girls actually ate most of, which was good for us (they are all in a phase where they fight dinner right now). We had dessert and then the girls got to play with toys and run around while we sat and chatted. The girls were so silly running around and laughing, Lucy really started to come out of her shell at this point and was giggling so much.

After visiting we decided to head home. We have half our cobbler left over so that's nice, but no food leftover (obviously that was left there). So since I love having leftovers we're going to have another dinner on Sunday night so we can have the leftovers I love, I'm very excited about that. 

So another great Thanksgiving in the books and it was pretty low stress and lots of fun, family time. Now to move on to Christmas!

Gwen is 3

Gwen Gwen, or Kitty, or Fastest Runner, as she likes to be called is the sweetest little angel...and I do mean angel! She has the most perfectly curly, naturally highlighted blond hair, chunky cheeks and perfectly round belly and tushy from anyone else I know! She's always so silly with her little games and names she wants to be called. She still just likes to sit back and watch things and not lead too much, but she has SUCH an imagination. She makes up songs and stories all the time. The best is she'll say thank you without being prompted all the time (she's so polite). She's super shy, but so was I so I'm not surprised at all. I'm also amazed to say she didn't really have "terrible twos", at least not nearly as bad as other kids or Cara (and Cara wasn't really bad either). I constantly forgot she was 2, honestly, she's so much smarter for her age and so much more mature, I can tell she's brilliant and will continue to be. I absolutely love you to the moon and back and then some!

For her birthday this year we planned to go to Nickel City and have fun in the arcade. We planned to order her cake from Coldstone and food from the arcade. We booked the party a month or so in advance so everything was set. Then the week leading up to her birthday I realized I had forgotten to get her a gift so I had one planned for Christmas that I could get at the closest store that I figured worked for her birthday. I didn't wrap it very well and it just felt like everything got chaotic right before her birthday. The night before her party we went to order the cake, but found out it was too late and we couldn't get one in time for her party. We made a backup plan we'll just have to grab one from the store and have them decorate it and call it good (boring, but like she'll know the difference).I kept telling Larry at least we had the big party booked and had informed people in time so it should be a good turn out. 

Flash Forward to today, we booked the party for 5:00, but decided to head to the arcade early so the girls could play for a while before the party started. We got to the front and mentioned we were there for Gwen's party. The guy looked at his party papers and said he didn't see one for Gwen. We were so confused so I had Larry pull up the confirmation email and show the guy. He mentioned they don't send confirmation emails and took a look at it and pointed out that it was for a Nickel City in Illinois...which does us absolutely no good. He also mentioned all their party rooms were booked so he couldn't get us in either way.

Well we figured we'd at least pay to get everyone in, let them play and then just celebrate in their sitting area for food (it's separate from the arcade) and just make the most of it. We left the cake in the car (it felt cold enough that it should be okay). Well around 4:30 I went to go order the pizzas (the guy said they just needed about 20 minutes to make a few pizzas) and when the guy looked at the pizza area, he said they were completely out. I was shocked! This was a Saturday, when they are open until midnight, and they are just out of pizza? They didn't have any other food options besides ice cream so I didn't understand how they planned to operate the rest of the night without this. We couldn't have a party at dinner time without any food so I told Larry we needed to plan to move the party elsewhere.

Unfortunately, on a Saturday regular restaurant can't accommodate such large parties so we ended up at Pizza Pie Cafe. Not bad, since it had a lot of options, and we lucked out when we got there that they had a couple large tables next to each other that we could fit everyone in. Unfortunately, I found out right after we got there that another large group had reserved that area, but since they hadn't put up signs the other group just had to find other tables. I felt bad we got their reservation, but it wasn't something we did intentionally, so we made the most of it. 

Only pic from her actual party

We were luckily able to get food, open gifts, sing her the birthday song (in fact, everyone in the whole area was singing to her, even people who didn't know us...I thought that was sweet), and have cake so it worked out. It was just extremely stressful and annoying. When we got home tonight we went to figure out why our reservation went to the wrong place and realized when you google Nickel City, the main one in Illinois is the first one to come up, you have to click the link for Nickel City Orem! So now Larry has to try and get the deposit we put down back. 

In the end, all she'll remember is that she had a good birthday and I doubt she'll really remember her 3rd birthday party. We plan to have 1:1 dates next weekend with her so IF she remembers anything, hopefully it's that. At the very least we have a bunch of Nickel City cards to play with so that's a win.