Sometimes You Don't Have To Do Things The Hard Way

I know that I have been missing in action for quite a few days. Last Wednesday, I spent the day at doctor appointments and celebrating Diana's birthday with her.

We had originally planned on having a full blown party. Diana had decided that it should have an Olympics theme with water type events, and then everyone would come inside and watch movies and act out parts from it, and then go back outside and have a water balloon fight. And there would be pizza and cake and... and.... and.... and pretty much sounded like fun, if you are not tottering on the edge of falling into the bottomless pit of insanity.

Too bad for her that her mother is old and decrepit and has lived through a traumatic experience in the past month. And truthfully, it is not as if she sat in her room ignored on her birthday. In Seattle, my family all went bowling and made her a cake and gave her presents up the yin yang. So the child is not neglected. It is just that in my anguish of sending her away, I made stupid promises that a party with all of her friends would happen when she got back .

At one point in my anxiety about the upcoming party, I even foolishly offered to pay her $100 not to have the party. You know kind of like when parents offer to pay their kids instead of having a wedding reception. Most likely a party would have cost about the same, although I could have done it for less, if I was willing to put more work into it. Honestly I did not have the energy to put into it, so I would have spent the money anyway. But finally, I came to my senses and realized that this year I was not up to all that a birthday party requires. You know stamina, energy, resources, small stuff like that. For sure I didn't want to end up like this poor mother.

So in my best sneaky motherly way, I convinced Diana that wouldn't it be better if we had our own special Mother/Daughter birthday extravaganza. She had been lamenting the fact that we had not had her birthday sooner, so I exclaimed "and we can do it today" as an added incentive. Pretty underhanded, don't ya think?

To begin with, we went out to eat at the place of her choice. This ended up to be Appplebee's. Yay, I love that place. Diana chose the oriental chicken salad and I got a yummy chicken, apple, walnut salad. They were both delicious, and then all the employees came and sang to her and gave her a yummy chocolate mouse dessert.

After dinner, we headed to the mall and went to Build-a-Bear. This was also her choice. Diana had been to Build-a-Bear four previous times. And somehow the fates have smiled upon me, and I have not taken her yet. So this was my fist time. Yes, I was a Build-a-Bear virgin. But not to worry, Diana knew very well what to do.
She chose a husky dog, that can hold a little baby husky with a magnet in its mouth. Here she is helping to put the stuffing into the shell.

And here is the finished product. She had a great time, I even found myself getting into it and enjoying our special time. So it fulfilled the purpose of convincing her we had celebrated and helping to fill the void that she has felt with me spending so much time with Jared. Yay, for that. And with no party looming on Saturday, I was free to go to girls camp. Yippee!