Dating Daddy

(Kate, Daddy, and Emma on their very first Date Night)

This new year has brought with it a new sense of  'parenting with purpose' for Boss and I. We are currently knee deep in character training with Emma (see previous post!), behavior/right from wrong training with Kate, and are expecting our third child in the next eight weeks. Having soon to be three children in completely different phases of growing up, thus requiring different skills and needs from us as parents, has taught us that we have got to be parents with a purpose. If we do not have goals or a vision of how we want our family to be, and if we do not commit that vision to God, then our parenting is in vain.

One of the ways we can make sure that we are parents with a purpose is by spending quality time with our children. If I thought I was busy with toddlers, I was wrong! Parenting school aged children is a whole new ball game. If I would let us, we would be in the car all day, every day, driving from activity to activity. There is so much that my children want to see, learn about, and explore, that if I was not purposeful in selecting which activities we participated in, our home school would quickly go by the way side and would become van school. We have learned quickly that we must be careful with our time!

I get to spend all day, every day, with the girls, and while Boss is around our home more than most dads, he decided that this would be a good year to starting 'dating' our daughters. Every once in awhile, he wants to take them out (either individually or together), so that they can have some quality father/daughter time. In the midst of the crazy schedules that we keep, he wants to make sure that our girls know that he always has time for them. While we both know it will not be cool forever, the girls were both beside themselves with excitement to go on their very first date with daddy!

Boss got the three of them tickets to a Wizard of Oz play being performed in our community. The girls wore matching fancy dresses (and insisted on daddy wearing a tie!), they did their hair in Dorothy braids, and they got to choose the restaurant they would eat at before the play (they chose Bob Evans. surprise, surprise). While Boss said he did not get to eat because he spent the whole meal time at the potty with Kate (there's just something about those restaurant bathrooms that fascinates her), the girls had so much fun and came home adoring their daddy more than ever. While Emma is getting more into the boy thing, Kate said she wanted to date her daddy forever.

Thank you Boss, for being a wonderful dad, and for being my partner in the hardest job we ever could have imagined!