Category Archives: tweens

Fair Food Fun

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Girls Ice Cream

Imagine Fun Fair Food had zero calories and only benefited your health in every way. Which would you choose?

Elephant ears, funnel cakes, strawberry shortcakes. Dairy barn ice cream, blueberry ice cream, cotton candy piled to the sky on a twirly cardboard cone. Fried zucchini, fried snickers bars, fried cheesecake. French fries, deep fried curled potatoes, broasted potatoes. Barbecue turkey legs, corn dogs, pork tenderloin. Lemon Shake ups, on-tap root beer, or a diet soda if you really feel bad about all the other calories.

Fair Food. Fair food is so, so fun. Expensive, yes. Unhealthy, yes; but so, so good.

Our family loves to eat. Yes, with the health food revolution , we stand firmly by our cause. Fair junk food. Fair junk food heaven–Junk food paradise. Mind you, only once or twice a year. If we ate Fun Fair Food more than that, we’d be both broke and bloated, so we choose our Fun Fair Food binges carefully.

Before you speed dial Jamie Oliver or Michele Obama to tell on me, put the iPhone down and look me in the eyes when I talk junk food. Hear my heart. This is important. I’ll eat a carrot and a flax seed too, (whatever that is), when I am done writing this article. I promise.

Whether it’s the warm air mixed with the fair grime smell or some sort of fair magic, It draws you in…when you are at a summer fair, the smells, sights, blinking neon signs with promises of fun, happiness and elephant ears. The crowds, the people, the noise…and the food–it’s all a part of the fun.

Our family is mesmerized by the fair magic and we are drawn to the neon lights like hungry little caterpillars to that Hungry Little Caterpillar book. We love fair food. Over the years, we have grown in our love of fair food and our strategies to consume it in the most efficient way possible. I thought I’d share our strategies with you, in case you plan on being drawn in as well:

Divide and conquer

We go four ways. The older two girls get in line for their Walking Tacos and Corndogs with explicit instructions not to look at or engage any boy, man, or stranger in any conversation whatsoever between the time they leave us and return to us, this saves time and a lot of confusion with teenage girls.

Rob, my husband is in charge of buying 5 super duper extra large lemonades with all the gritty, sugary stuff at the bottom…He is also in charge a few more the main dinner item(s). A Philly cheesesteak sandwich, a barbecue turkey leg, and about 50 napkins to stuff into his cargo short pockets. Me and Belle, our youngest daughter-we are the fried food girls. We get the deep fried veggies with about five vats of ranch dipping sauce. And also about 50 more napkins.

Seriously Indulge

We text and call each other to find a designated meeting spot at picnic table or if it’s too crowded, we just plop down on the grass and dump all the food in front of us. And we seriously indulge. We take a few bites of whatever is in front of us, pass it on for the next person…unless you’re like me and you’re not really into sharing. We eat it all. Every bite. Some of the food ends up on clothes or spilled on the ground for the more than five second rule. We don’t fuss. It’s no big deal. It’s the fair!

After licking our fingers clean and wiping faces for fair presentability, we head to the rides.

Spin and Repeat

Velocity burns calories, right? Absolutely it does. So we figure if we ride the really fast, spinning rides, most of the calories will disappear. At least that’s what we’d like to believe.

For those of us with milder spinning ride dispositions, we wait by the exit and try to manage holding the 5 refillable lemonade super extra large plastic up things with the really cool long bendy straws, the hats, the purses, and all the random accumulated fair items.

After we’ve ridden the rides, we split up and hit the lines for dessert. The same process as dinner, split up, text, call, meet back up, share or not share, depending on your degree of dessert hoarding (my level would be really high again here).

But really, if I were to let you in on a secret, and I am sure you already know this. The Fair isn’t just about the food. It’s about the fun and the friends you see with their kids, doing the same thing as your family is doing. Enjoying the rides, being silly, eating mounds of cotton candy, laughing and having a great time.

The Fun Fair Food is a great bonding experience for our family, something we laugh about and strategize about together through the year. We keep our lemon shake up cups with the bendy straws and occasionally someone will say, “Remember when…” and that’s the whole point right there. Remembering, making memories and being together.

So next time you are at the fair, take our family’s word for it. Divide and conquer, Seriously indulge, Spin and repeat. Worry about what’s healthy the day after the fair. Eat all your veggies un-fried that day, eat a flax seed, whatever that is, and scrub the fair grime out of your kids’ clothes. Most importantly, have fun remembering all the joy your family experienced along the way.

 

This article appears in the June 2013 issue of Michiana Family magazine.

 

How Magic Happens

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 Maddie and I share a common passion in photography. She gets this little glimmer in her eye when we see some rode side barn or the sun shining a certain way…

 And then we pull over and take pictures.  Lots and lots of pictures.  Her little 13 year old brain is spinning, creating while we stand there, thinking of what will be the perfect shot.  It’s funny, because that’s what I do too, but I could never explain it to someone. I think because she’s seen me do it ten thousand times, she understands the process.

But her creativity is different than mine.  What a joy to watch her come into her own gifts, her own talents, her own time…it’s been one of the most fun parts of being her Mommy.

We both sucked air as we drove past this barn near our house Saturday night, the sunlight shining through the beams, vines climbing over old woodwork.  It was a golden moment that I will treasure in my memory always.

I’m so glad I took that drive with Maddie.  It took 30 minutes of my day. In those 30 unplanned, unexpected moments, magic happened.  I’m grateful.  So, so grateful.

Do I Need To Pull This Car Over?

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I have a question to ask.  How many of you had parents that said to you, while you were riding in the back seat of their station wagon, “Do I need to pull this car over?  Because you do not want me to pull this car over.”  My parents did!  I have used this same technique, much to my own horror, but found it extremely effective about twice.

Well, imagine you are all in the back seat of a station wagon right now, and I am in the drivers seat.  I see most of you behaving so nicely, sitting on your hands even, trying your very best to be good and do right.  But…there are SOME of you, who are doing other things. We’re pulling over, and I’m calling a time-out.

For starters, I know I have a lot of opinions about stuff.  I am always hesitant to share them in a public way for fear of imposing on other people’s opinions, angering them, making them uncomfortable, etc.  My biggest fear in expressing my rather strong opinions is that I would come across as high and mighty, or leave the impression that I have arrived at a place of perfection that I can only look down from.  The truth is that I struggle daily with a sense of self-worth, hoping that I am doing a good job as a wife, mom, and a friend.  I make mistakes all the time, usually pretty selfish ones, putting my own needs and wants above others.

But for today, I cautiously step out and share a few opinions about faith and family that might help someone somewhere.  If not, I know it will help me just to get the words on a page so I don’t explode with exclamation points and italics print all over the next person I see…

My Opinion on Parenting Young Children:

You are in charge.  Your baby isn’t.  Your toddler isn’t.  You are.  You are the parent for a reason.  You have a lifetime of experience behind you that helps you make wise decisions for your family and your precious children.  Your feelings are important.  Listen to your gut.  Your baby and/or toddler will cry and scream to get out of bed, eat waffles with maple syrup for every meal, and hit and bite you and others to get their way.  All of these things are primal and instinctual.  Your child wants to get their way.  It’s natural and it’s normal.  Sometimes when they’re little, it’s really cute; However, if you coddle them and tell them they CAN eat waffles and maple syrup for every meal, get out of bed whenever they want, hit and bite whomever they please, they will become exactly what their instinct tells them they need to become–self serving, self-centered, tyranical little people.

When these babies and toddlers get just a little older, some will become bus bullies, shoving smaller kids out of their way to get their own seat.  Others will become playground tyrants, bossing their minions around.  Some will become cleverly disguised little passive-aggresive girls or boys who look plesant on the outside while secretly plotting to do whatever it takes to keep the world spinning around them.  They plot ways to keep you, their parent, catering to their every whim. They say what will please you so they can keep calculating their next move to keep you distracted from their self-centered and increasingly destructive behavior.

Bottom line: “Kids these days” (and yes, I am horrified by my own use of that phrase) get a trophy for just showing up at a sport.  They are given a black belt for karate on their second lesson.  No one loses, no one is disciplined or corrected.  If a child  has never earned a “win”, they lose sight of what goals and dreams are like, and everything begins to revolve around them.  If a child has rarely been redirected  when their sweet little wills began to wander, don’t be surprised when you wake up one morning to find an eye-rolling, door-slamming teenager in your house.

I humbly, and I really mean humbly–advise you to take control now.  I’m not talking about spanking or not spanking, grounding or punishing…I’m talking about daily involvement in the little choices your precious child is making.  It’s the little things we turn away from because they are too hard to deal with in the moment that slowly progress to real problem issues that quickly get way past our own ability to control.

I know I am not too far off base and I look at Eli, a temple priest in the Bible.  He was given the enormous responsibility of raising Samuel, God’s chosen instrument to bring his grace to His people at the time.  He poured his life into his ministry and into raising Samuel.  BUT, he turned away from what was closest to his home and to his heart–the sin of his own children.  The Bible literally says,

“ And the Lord said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them. 2 Samuel 3:11-13

It’s time to pull the station wagon over friends.  Eli kept driving, eyes averted from the rearview mirror.  The cost of this was tragic.  We don’t know exactly when his sons began to disobey and act shamefully.  My guess is that they didn’t start robbing the church or sleeping with prostitutes when they were 3 or 4.  It probably started with minor issues, like Eli caving in every time they asked for waffles and maple syrup, or ignoring the fact that they got out of bed for the thousandth time at night when they should have been sleeping…It’s these little things that turn into big things.  He didn’t pull the station wagon over. Not once, not ever.

If you cannot control your child’s behavior with simple redirection and discussion, ask for help! Rob and I have spent countless hours with friends just a few steps ahead of us, begging for ideas and tools that would help motivate our children toward better behavior.  When it comes to our parenting, my hope and prayer is that we will never be too proud to ask for help.

 

Teaching your Tween to Wait

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I bought some expensive jeans this month. Really expensive. I still feel slightly guilty about it, but I waited a long time until I was able to get them on sale. I had a little extra spending money, and I was in desperate need of a new pair – especially a pair with sparkly roses – so I caved in to my inner diva and bought them.

One of my children, who shall remain nameless, saw my jeans and declared them “unfair.” This daughter insisted that she needed the same brand of expensive jeans with sparkly roses on the pockets, too – since every single pair of hers were suddenly too small and outdated.

My answer: No. I waited until I was almost 38 years old to get these jeans. You can wait awhile longer, too.

Both our older girls have been begging us for an iPhone. I tell them repeatedly that I was the last person in the Western hemisphere to get a cell phone. I was 33 years old before I even got one, and 37 before I got an iPhone. The combined ages of all three of my girls don’t even total up to my current age, so again, my answer to their pleas? Wait. A long time.

With all that said, guess what? Our 8-year-old has an iPhone. Not one that works to make phone calls, but it functions as an iPod Touch. I’ll take a step back while you throw rocks and garbage and mock my hypocrisy. Allow me to explain.

Our girls have always enjoyed learning games on various handheld electronic devices. We’ve had all the Leap Frog toys, Nintendo DS’s, DSI’s, V-tech toys, you name it. With each game, we have spent close to $100 per device (or more). These toys always serve an educational purpose, and even more important to my sanity, a distraction device from hitting, biting and punching each other on long car rides to Grandma’s or vacation.

Quickly we found that these toys add up to some serious cash spent. Along with the cash spent, we found the girls outgrowing and outsmarting the games in a few short months. (Being the smart parents that we are, it took us about 10 years to figure that out).

So, this past Christmas, we found an old 3G iPhone on Craigslist for cheaper than an iTouch, and way cheaper than a smart educational toy that we had first considered for Belle. On her new device, she has endless educational games, the ability to take photos like her big sisters, and she can use it to listen to stories before bed. (You can keep throwing rocks and garbage at me; I don’t mind).

When she opened her gift on Christmas morning, she was completely shocked. She kept repeating over and over, “I never thought I would have an iTouch!” Her joy made us all giggle and really made us proud as parents. It was a worthwhile investment for us and has served its purpose well.

Occasionally when we have the money and the situation is right, we might do something crazy and buy an iTouch for an 8-year-old. We say yes because we love our kids.

Wanting nice things is not bad. Wanting to give your kids nice things stems out of our love for them and desire to make them happy. Of course that’s not bad!

Unfortunately, with our best intentions being what they are, the constant act of giving a child what he or she does not have the capacity to appreciate leads to an aloof attitude from the child and almost an attitude of “I deserve this.”

If there is a special item our girls long for, and we know either we cannot afford it or the timing just isn’t right, these are suggestions we offer them:

 

Work for it

Our front door is a revolving door of children, both our own and random extras, always wanting food and messing up my house. One way I tell my girls they can make some extra money toward their goal is by cleaning up after these blessed friends.

The most despised job across the board at our house is folding socks. With three young girls, myself and my husband, the volume of socks that need to be matched and folded every week is truly astonishing. This is a high-paying job that I’d quickly pay anyone else to do since I despise it so much. There are always extra jobs like these that will pay cold hard cash at our house.

 

Save for it

From the time our girls could understand the concept of money, we have taught them to save. Each child has a piggy bank with a section for Savings, Spending, and Church. They save 10%, give 10% to church and have 80% of their allowance left to spend as they wish. We emphasize the “Savings” category is to be used for big ticket items such as a designer pair of jeans Mom is never going to buy them.

 

Wait For It

Your kids should know how awesome you are by now. Haven’t you always surprised them with amazing gifts in the past? I know we have. We’ve purposely hung on to a gift we could give them until the time and the place were right. By making them wait, hopefully our kids have learned to trust us a little with their wishes and dreams.

Waiting also has the positive benefit of finding something at just the right price. We have taught our girls to shop the sales after Christmas or holidays to show them how sometimes by waiting they can make their money go twice as far.

 

Go For It

There are times that necessitate gifts for no good reason at all. Giving is part of the joy of life, and surprising your kids with extraordinary love wrapped in a gift can be an amazing thing. Go for it. Surprise them from time to time – as long as they don’t learn to expect it. In giving to them, they are learning both the gift of giving and receiving, two very important life lessons.

And finally…

 

Table It

You are the one in charge. You can do it. Say no when you have to. Your kids might be angry, hurt or upset for a while, but you are older than them and obviously have more life experience. You’ve known them longer than anyone, and you know what’s best for them. Sometimes the best thing is just to say no and leave it at that. You are the adult, and you don’t even need to explain yourself!

My biggest piece of advice after everything I’ve said is this: If you buy yourself an expensive pair of jeans, hide the receipts and do not by any means disclose the price you paid to your children.

This article appears in the June 2012 issue of The Family Magazine of Michiana

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Joy

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Joy comes in all shapes and sizes. I am constantly reminded of this as each girl in our family contributes joy and happiness in their own unique way.  I am so very grateful for their specialness and the way they shine the love and light of God by just being who they are.  I’m so blessed.  So very thankful.

 

Missional Family

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“Missional” is a fairly new term that has been thrown around in Christian circles for the past few years.  If you understand what Missional is, you’ll know what I’m talking about, but if you have no clue what Missional means, here goes: “Missional living” is a Christian term that describes a missionary lifestyle; adopting the posture, thinking, behaviors, and practices of a missionary in order to engage others with thegospel message. That definition is from Wikipedia.  Here’s how we’re living it out around our house:

We love Jesus.  We know He has enormous love for us and the people He sends our way every day.  We are intentional about being God’s representitives of His love wherever we are.  At this phase of my life, I’m not travelling a lot to places like Africa, India, Mexico, etc. to spread God’s love.  But I am travelling to my kitchen, and my living room, and my back yard.  Here’s why:

We’ve made our home a Missional Outpost.  We pray that every person that comes through our doors will know and understand the love of Jesus because of the love we have for one another and the love we share with them.  The other day we had a new little friend over who was not following the rules and called one child a bad name.  I gently pulled her aside, looked into her precious round blue eyes and said, “Sweetheart, this is a house of love. We don’t call eachother bad names here.”  Another little guy that is always over here piped in and said, “She’s right! We love people here!” It made me so happy to hear him say that.

Here are some of the very easy and practical things we do to make our home “Missional”:

  •  We have an open door policy.  Any kid can come over to our house.  Good kids.  Bad kids.  We take them all.
  • Everyone follows the rules.  We are a house of love, so no name calling, fighting, stealing, or back talking.
  • Everyone helps each other.  If a kid eats over for dinner, they help out.  They are usually the ones more eager to help than my own children.
  • We talk. We swap stories at the dinner table about our day. Each kid shares at least one “high” and one “low” from their day.  Once everyone has shared one story, the talkers can have their turn to share more.
  • We pray. We pray before we eat dinner, or before the kids go to bed at a sleep over.  Not once has a guest been freaked out by this.  They love it. The past few nights one of our regular “guests” could not wait to ask if he could pray.

Our little buddy found his way to Jesus at our dinner table.  Missional living is not difficult. We love and serve Jesus as a family, and we just ask others to join in along the way.

I’d love to hear your Missional Living stories!  I bet you are already doing it and don’t even know it.  :)

 

The Five Star Life

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We have two middle schoolers in our household. As most parents of this age group are aware, every single day there is huge drama about who is wearing what, which clothes are not washed or are missing from their fabulous wardrobe. We try to be compassionate, patient and understanding, knowing that middle school is a rough age. They aren’t making it up when they say that everyone will notice if their shoes don’t go perfectly with an outfit, or if their hair is tinted green over the summer from one too many swims in a neighbor’s overly chlorinated pool. Not that it’s happened here, but I’m just sayin… Middle schoolers are tough on each other. So, any outside help in raising them and helping them become their best selves is always appreciated.

This is why we are so grateful for the presence of Five Star at the middle school our children attend. Five stars is the rating motels and movies use as a symbol for excellence. Five Star, the community service organization that has been working in 13 middle schools in Michiana for the past five years, is dedicated to helping kids build their own Five Star Life. Each family has their own set of values they want to pass along to their children.

In our family, the five principles Five Star teaches (they spend four weeks on each one) are very important values we also teach at home: Respect, responsibility, integrity, sacrifice and courage. We were amazed when our daughter came home and started acting out what she learned at Five Star. She was more respectful, took more responsibility for herself, and we saw her trying to be more kind and patient with her sisters. We were in complete shock and awe at the transformation in her little life and attitude. We teach these principles at home, but when she had the opportunity to learn and discuss them with a coach who is a friend and fun mentor to her, she “got” it.

The values we were teaching at home were being reinforced by some very fun activities and cool people at Five Star (apparently way cooler than her parents). For us as parents, we are thankful for the reinforcement of our family values in a fun environment and in a school setting. Five Star is a not-for-profit organization that exists to build self-esteem and character into tweens –1300 kids a week. Students gather one day a week after an already long day of school to hang out, do homework, play fun games, have a discussion with their coach and have a crazy fun time while learning important life lessons and character-building skills.

Five Star has been at Grissom Middle School for five years. The school was searching for a character building program, so when Seth Maust came in the office, he sold them on this program. When the program first started, they were hoping 20 students would sign up. Now, they have to turn away 60 students a year because Five Star has become so large. Aside from a weekly afterschool meeting, Five Star students can also participate in day trips to Manowee Ranch, using ropes, horseback riding and other fun activities to push students past their comfort zone while in a safe environment. This helps them to learn to trust each other and depend on one another while building self-esteem and awareness.

If your child or a middle schooler you know has the opportunity, encourage them to be a part of Five Star at their school. As we learned, they are partnering with the values we already have in place here at home and are doing an amazing job encouraging kids and mentoring them. Who knows, your middle schooler might actually start helping around the house or being kind to his brother or sister. It happened here!

This article appears in the December 2011 issue of Mi Child Magazine Did you like what you read here? Subscribe to Mi Child Magazine »

State of the Student Report

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 Parent teacher conferences were this week.  Maddie and Whit were so impressive with their Yale and Harvard sweatshirts. They have high aspirations…can’t blame them! Whitney is in advanced honors math, which is so far beyond me that I really can’t help her all that much.  They practice logic on levels that I am afraid would take me hours to unravel. . With her outgoing, bubbly personality, strong wit, sense of humor, etc, one would never guess that she is such a math and logic whiz. Grades are super important to her. She is doing phenomenally well her 1st semester of middle school.

Maddie is an extremely strong student across the board. She is getting all A’s at this point, and secretly loves learning. She is a very strong leader according to her teachers. One after the other talked about how she helps others and they depend on her to help interpret into tween language what the teacher just said.

The general consensus on both Maddie and Whit was: They are strong leaders, have strong opinions, are helpful and kind, and hard workers.  I am so proud of them.

We had Belle’s conference this week too.  Her teacher said that she is the most helpful student in class.  She always helps the kids who have special needs. She LOVES them, protects them, and loves to look out for them.  She is doing an amazing job at reading, and her strong suit is math.  She loves numbers. Belle is also quite an artist. I joke with her all the time that I will write books and she can illustrate them. I honestly can see that happening some day in the future.

One common theme between all three girls is their strong verbal skills.  Apparently they have the gift of gab, which they are learning to use in moderation.

I am so thankful for the school district we live in, the schools our girls attend, and the teachers that they have. We are so blessed, and it is so neat for us as parents to sit back and watch them thrive in these environments.  Rob and I are saving our pennies for those ivy league schools…and praying for scholarships.

R.I.P. Good Buddy

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Our buddy got tired. This isn’t a really great picture, but I took it last Friday night when we were having our regular Friday pizza/movie night.  I thought Winston looked so cute, but so worn out.  He would have turned 14 on November 6.

Yesterday while we were sleeping, he kept on coming into our room, trying to get my attention. I finally got up to let him outside and realized he had gotten sick pretty much all over the house. By morning, he was not responding to me and just wanted to be left alone. I took him to the vet and they said, “It’s time”.  I’ve known for awhile that he was in the end of his days, and didn’t want him to linger in pain every day from sore knees and other dog old age problems.  But it was hard, very hard.

Winston was our first kid. Rob and I got him a year before we had Maddie, so he lived long enough as our only kid for a long time, fully boding with us, learning to trust us and love us. He was just a little white fur ball when we got him. He rode under the front seat of the car when we brought him home, quivering in fright.  I remember the first day we had him home, he layed on Rob’s chest and fell asleep for a long, long time.

He was very docile and compliant….until we had Maddie.  He was afraid of her little baby cries at first, but a switch flipped in him once he realized this was a “Puppy” the three of us were supposed to protect with our ferocious barks. From that day on, any time anyone would come to our door or walk into our yard, he would bark and bark, terrifying the on-commer with his less than one foot tall ferocity.

As soon as the stranger walked through our door, knowing they must be one of the good guys,  he would nuzzle against them waiting to be petted and loved.  One of the things we will always laugh about when we remember Winston is how he would love to take care of the girls when they were babies. If I laid them on the carpet for just a minute and left the room, I would come back to the room to find Winston hurridley licking their faces and hands to get that icky soap smell off them so they would smell “clean” like his dog breath.

He did have the worst breath of any dog ever in the history of the world.

When Maddie was about 18 months old, we used to take her, Winston and baby Whitney over to a field by our house we nicknamed “The Running Field”. He’d run and run in circles, getting his puppy energy out. Maddie would yell at the top of her lungs, “WEESAAWW!” because she couldn’t say Winston. I still refered to him as Weesaw till the day he died.

He was such a good buddy to our girls.

In one year, he got mauled by a neighbors dog, had two surgeries, got hit by a truck, but miraculously he survived it all.  When we brought Ellie our Golden Retriever with a cleft pallet that drools, coughs, hacks and sputters, Winston thought we were the most evil dog parents ever. He hated her. She would nip at his tail playfully. He would growl at her. She’d nip playfully again, bowing her head down in front of him. He’d growl, she’d nip, until he finally gave in and they became best friends.

When I came home from the vet yesterday, Ellie sniffed me and gave me the saddest eyes ever. She looked at the van, hoping her little buddy would hop right out and give her her daily “dog lick bath” from Winston, but he didn’t come out. She’s been walking to the laundry room, looking for him, circling around the house, then laying on the floor pouting. It. Breaks. My Heart. She knew her buddy was sick yesterday. I could tell she was very worried about him.  She’s never been an only dog child, so it will be interesting to see how she responds in the next few days.  The girls are already clamoring for another puppy, but I won’t be ready for that for a long, long time.

The girls are all handling their grief in different ways. Belle went right to her room when she found out, wrote and illustrated an entire book dedicated to her best buddy. She took it pretty well.  Maddie and Whit took it very hard. He’s been their one connection to their early childhood days that bring them so many fun memories. They have each other, but Winston was their other best buddy.

I could not watch the movie Marly and Me because I knew Winston’s day was coming.  I finally got tricked into watching it a few months back and sobbed through the whole thing. I’ll never watch it again because it will just make me too sad. I’ll miss our little buddy.

Chicago Weekend With My Almost Teenager

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Miss Maddie turns 13 tomorrow.  13 is a big deal in our family, partly because we have never had our own teenager before, and partly because in our culture, becoming a teenager is sort of a really big deal.

To celebrate this special birthday, Maddie and I made a trip to Chicago and stayed at a nice motel right downtown. (Paid for by Rob’s frequent flyer miles-Yay!) She had a little birthday money to spend, so we hit Watertower Place and a few other shops. She loves to shop, but I do have to say she knows how to stretch her money as far as possible.  I love that about Maddie.

Throughout our time together, we also went through the Passport to Purity book and CD’s. It is a great resource for tweens just crossing over the line from tween to teen.  We talked about boys, dating, God, and girl stuff.  We had some really great conversations, all highly confidential, and I promised I would not blog, tweet, or Facebook about them.  I totally respect her privacy, but some of our funnier conversations would have been great blogging material.  :)

As some of you know, I am a HUGE Insagram fan.  If you don’t know what that is, Instagram is an iPhone photo application that allows you to edit and upload your iPhone photos into a really brilliantly creative community of fellow amateur photographers (and some not-so amateur).  Well, I found out that Instagram Chicago was doing a photo walk only a few miles from where we were staying, and Maddie and I went.  Maddie is also a huge Instagram fan, and takes some pretty amazing photos.  It was so much fun meeting fellow Instagram friends that I have been following for awhile.  Most of the pics you see above are from our photo walk through Lincoln Park in Chicago.

We had a great time together, and  I know lots of memories were made.  It was exhausting, but a huge investment into Maddie’s teenage years.