Date Day with my Boys

Do you get a lot of QUALITY time with your kids? I know I don’t. Don’t get me wrong – I wish I could spend an ENDLESS quantity of time with my kiddos, but teaching full time limits my time with them and then especially being a single parent – one-on-one time with my kiddos is few and far between. I don’t want my only time with them spent making dinner, driving them to lessons, practice & doing homework, etc. So, instead of feeling guilty all the time, and since those precious one-on-one moments weren’t presenting themselves naturally, I CREATED THEM! And {I hope} have found a way to create some special quality time for me and my boys.
We call it Date Day. {Although my 7 yr. old reminds me that it’s not THAT kind of a date.} Even though we practice manners, being a gentleman, opening doors and that sort of thing, it's really just a young boy man, taking his mom out for some special individual time. Once a week! {I started doing this at the end of last school year with them and they LOVED it! Back then, it was easier because they were at the same after school care. This year, they are at two different places.} Soooo:

The Problem: Find a way to create some alone time with each boy once a week this year.

The solution: Realizing they each had consecutive 1 1/2 hour football practices on the same day each week, so instead of sitting on the field for 3 hrs. they each get a turn going on a date while the other brother practiced.

And thus, DATE DAY was reborn!



Big S chose to go out and get Root Beer Floats! {Good choice big guy!}
We sat and chatted about school and thing we wanted to do and looking forward to winter. And then we notice this:



That, folks, is a real live working juke box! Well, we now have a favorite date place! We walked right over and checked out the song list! The selection was a bunch of 50’s and 60’s oldies but goodies {wouldn’t have expected anything else!} and we took our choice seriously. {AND it was FREE!}



What did we play, you ask? The Monkees, “I’m a Believer!” and we rocked the joint all night long. {Well, for about a half hour of the night at least, before we had to pick up brother.}
Of course, Little Man got his date tonight too. Not to be outdone by his brother, we sat and conversed over the specially requested choice of anything with a cherry on top of it please:


Success!!
And I loved this date stop too because they let you know that apples are now a choice with their meals with this cute display:




Not bad for a fast food joint. And let me tell you – you learn a lot about a guy over a pint {of ice cream and root beer.} For example, middle school has WAY better lunches than elementary school and next week, you’ll be able to check out footballs and basketballs with your school ID, which is cool, because you and your friend Chris invented a game you wanted to try. And in 2nd grade, you are happy to have moved off “The Sun” in class and on to “Out of this Universe” for the second day in a row! And you also wanted it to be known that Hunter {not the short Hunter, but the TALL one, by the way} and him made up a team and decided to call it Angry Birds. It is yet to be determined just what the intensions of this team are though…

Like I said, never a dull moment with kids. Much more was learned in our talks today, but I took a vow of mom secrecy on those matters. ;o)

So, these dates just make me want to spend MORE and MORE quantities of times with my kiddos, but I guess I will have to let go of some of that mom guilt and enjoy the QUALITY of time I do get. xo


So how do you create one-on-one time with your kids? What types of activities do you enjoy with your quality time together? I’d love to hear your thoughts!