Sophie's Special Day

This past Saturday was Sophie's "special" day to spend with just her and Grandma as a late part of her birthday.  She had been looking forward to this day forever... anticipating it, planning for it, fretting that it wouldn't happen.  Just last week she was whining (in serious fashion) that she was NEVER going to get to have her special day because I had to go back to meetings and school and she'd have to wait until NEXT YEAR to even do it.  My calm suggestions that perhaps her special day could occur on a weekend were immediately and very emotionally rebuffed.

So when Saturday rolled around and it was finally time for her day, she didn't want to go. At least not by herself.  She wanted Hannah to go too.  Unfortunately, Hannah didn't want to go.  She and I had made plans to tag-team cleaning the bathrooms (with extra allowance in it for her, of course), shop for fabric at Ben Franklin, and then have me hunker down to get a serious amount of school work done (since I was way behind in being ready for students on Monday).  Plus Hannah doesn't like going to the movies (they're too loud), which was part of Sophie's plan for her day.

So, at the last minute we rearranged plans.  Sophie, Grandma, Hannah, and I went shopping in the morning to buy the girls outfits for the first day of school (photos to come later).  They encountered some riding motorized animals outside of Belk that Sophie talked Grandma into paying for them to ride.  They said it was fun, but they didn't seem too enthralled during their 3-minute ride.

Then we went to Chipotle for lunch, where Sophie really wanted to get her own taco that she could put things on.  This was something she'd also been looking forward to for several weeks, since one day awhile ago when we were deciding whether to eat out at Chipotle or Grilled Cheese Mania.  (On that particular day we actually ended up at Francesco's as a compromise, since Sophie wanted Chipotle and Hannah wanted Grilled Cheese Mania.)  Since then Sophie had been wanting her taco from "Taco Mania," as Hannah started calling it.

Sadly, the hype did not live up to the actual experience.  She thought the chips were "spicy" and didn't eat much of the soft taco that she filled with black beans and cheese.  Finally she gave up and split Hannah's piece of pizza that we purchased at the mall before driving to Chipotle.

Next we killed a little time at Barnes & Noble (with me going next door to Bed Bath & Beyond and scoring a long-handled bottle brush and a pie crust cover).  Hannah and I then drove them to the movie theater to watch Smurfs 2 while we did grocery shopping at Wal-Mart.

I don't like shopping for groceries in stores I'm not familiar with, and the busy-ness of Wal-Mart made this trip even less enjoyable.  We got what we needed, however, and then had some time to spare.  So we made use of some Klines gift cards and Hannah's love for chocolate peanut butter, which was the delicious flavor of the week.

So, I never did get any school work done, but it was a fun and productive day none-the-less.  (Especially when you consider that Charles cleaned the bathrooms, I squeezed in laundry along the way, and tackled some garden tasks and paying bills in the evening.)