Kids and their Mother Day

I used my last personal business day today and it turned out to be a very good day. I went for a quick run before Paul went to work - it's good I did. If I would have waited until later in the day I wouldn't have been able to make it back home - it is so incredibly windy here.

Carly and I were going to do some shopping and go out for lunch. Carly wore her new flowery dress and black Mary Jane style crocs and we spent a little extra time styling her hair this morning and she looked great. Our first stop was JC Penney. Carly picked out two pairs of denim shorts and shirts for herself. She enjoyed trying them on in the dressing room. She also helped pick out some shorts for Ellen. We should be in good shape for summer clothes now.

We went downtown and brought my wedding ring into a shop to have it repaired. One of the prongs on my ring came off a couple weeks ago. I decided to have all four replaced since two needed work and another would need work soon. I figured it made more sense to do them all at once since I was bringing it in.

We then went to Goodwill in search of cheap 70s statues - no luck there. We walked down to the Salvation Army where I scored an excellent one which I will post after this. Carly was excited that we found one. She carried it to the counter and took the bag when we left. She insisted that we hold hands during all of the shopping - which was nice.

We had lunch at Sammy's Pizza. They reopened this week. They had a fire right before Easter and everyone in the area was concerned about them reopening. It's our family's favorite restaurant and it was nice to go back there. Carly had rigatoni which she said was "So good!" I had the pizza/salad lunch buffet - which was also "So good!"

We picked up a few groceries and stopped at Walgreens to get some hair clips for Carly. On the way home Carly said, "Do you know what day it is? It's kids and their mother day." We really did have a nice morning together. When we got home we called over to the Lamppa's to see if Ella would like to come over and play. She's been to our house a couple times, but never without her mom. She told Stacey to say yes, but only for one minute. The girls played in the park - picked lots of dandelions. They set up a million stuffed animals in the living room. We played croquet in the yard and they played with their dolls in the playhouse. We even went over to our new neighbor's place to check out the fireplace they just finished installing - very pretty. We had called Stacey about an hour into Ella's visit to let her know things were going just fine and since she didn't need to be home for anything we'd bring her back later in the afternoon unless she wanted to go back earlier. She was at our house about 3.5 hours - much longer than a minute. We brought her back when it looked like it would rain at any time - which it did. I hope that Ella will be a regular visitor at our house this summer. It's good for both of the girls and it gives Stacey a bit of a break. Her other daughter was napping while Ella was gone, so she just had her twins to take care of. When I got home from taking Ella back, Paul told me that Carly told him it was a day just for girls and moms.

Today was the kind of day that makes me anxious for summer. It's nice knowing we'll have a lot of days like that soon.