Girl's Night

We've been given a girl's weekend at the Royal house. The only human male member of our clan headed out on a bus with @175 middle school kids. We still have Hank--our 105 lb yellow lab and Dipper--Hope's 2 oz frog--with us, so I couldn't say all males were gone.

I wish I could say I had been intentional and planned a fun girl’s weekend, but honestly, I didn't. I still am not sure if I've recuperated from spring break and was really hoping for a low-key weekend at home. At least, as low-key as it can be when you have 2 soccer games in the middle of the afternoon and have to drag your kids out of bed and up to work with you at 6:30am.

So, after dropping off Brian, a girl's night kind of just formed. We went to dinner at my favorite place (which both girls agreed to with a little bribery of Smores Fondue afterward). After dinner, we decided to get pedicures. Now, I absolutely love having my feet look pretty, but it often loses the relaxation factor when I have the girls with me.

There's a new place in our Wal-Mart that was advertising $15 pedicures. After going back and forth in my head about how we really shouldn't spend the money, I caved (which I seem to be doing a lot these days). Caroline, my girly-girl, had her first real pedicure for her birthday (a gift from her Aunt Tess) and now knows the difference between a pedicure and just having her nails painted. Hope had never had one before, so Caroline was explaining the massage chair, the tickling sponge they use and the bubbles in the warm water to her, making Hope beg to go.

So we went. The girls loved it and the ladies that did their feet painted flowers for them at no extra charge. They thought it was hilarious when the guy doing mine pulled out a sander and used it on my foot. Yep, I was sufficiently embarrassed as all the Wal-Mart shoppers were walking by looking in to see what the loud noise was. Before you start to gag, my feet were really not that bad—I’ve seen way worse, but I think some men just need to use a power tool when they do less-than-manly tasks (like Brian using our shop vac to sweep our floors).

So we all left with pretty toes, raced home to feed our dogs and grab popcorn. Then we headed to the outdoor movie showing a few blocks from our house. The girls sat with friends and I embarrassed myself once again by laughing loudly and often (I have seen Despicable Me before, but it is just so stinkin funny!).

So, long post about nothing, really. Part of me is journaling these events so that I can show my girls (or, more likely, their therapists) in a few years that I at least tried to be a good mom.

Seriously, I am coming to realize that the best moments just happen when we allow margin in our lives. There's nothing wrong with planning, but in the Royal house, those plans have to be pretty loose. Otherwise, we miss the joy of the experience because we are so busy racing to get to it and by the time we get there, we are all angry at each other.

So, while the thought of planning a girl's night exhausted me earlier in the week, it ended up being a fun-filled night with a few funny memories thrown in. Instead of huge events, my goal is that we have one happy Royal family memory a week. If we start now, Hope will have over 400 of them and Caroline over 500 by the time they leave for college. Now that's worth shooting for.