April 17, 2023

Special Days

I had such an unexpectedly great day today! When Noah woke up this morning, he said that his class was canceled because his teacher had something going on and he wasn't on the schedule to work today, so he had the whole day free. I asked him if he would want to do something together and he said sure.

When the kids were younger, I used to have what I called a "Special Day" with them each school year (individually, not both of them together). I let them play hooky from school and they could choose what we would do together--lunch and a movie or bowling or things like that. They mostly enjoyed going to lunch and/or getting frozen yogurt ;)

Dairy Queen with Noah--we both loved the Reese's Cup flurries!

They loved having the Special Day because it made them feel--well, special. They thought it was cool that they were allowed to skip school when they weren't sick or had an appointment.

The movies with Eli

When Noah started at the middle college (ninth grade), he stopped wanting to do the Special Days because he was so worried about missing school. He's always been the super responsible one between the two. And then the pandemic happened and the Special Days just stopped being a thing altogether--they were home from school for nearly the entire school year anyway.

Bowling with Noah

Mini golf with Eli

(Going through pictures was fun--I forgot about some of these days!)

I didn't say anything to Noah about it being a Special Day today, but as a mom, I was thinking of it that way. Noah bought a car in December and I hadn't ridden in it yet. He is *really* into cars and it was like he was speaking a foreign language to me when he talked about it. He's very proud of it, so I asked him if we could ride in his car and I think he was excited to show me that he can drive a manual transmission (and all the features he loves about his car).

We decided to go to Salvation Army. First, though, we stopped at my parents' house because their internet wasn't working and Noah had told my dad that he would fix it. My dad was working on a puzzle when we got there and it took Noah all of three minutes to fix the internet issue, so we stayed and worked on the puzzle for a little while with my dad.

Noah knows I like podcasts, so he asked me to pick one for us to listen to. The 'Stuff You Should Know' podcast is a good one for casual listening (and it's fascinating!) and we listened to an episode about skydiving. (Just thinking about skydiving is terrifying--even if someone offered me a million dollars to go skydiving, I would decline.)

Salvation Army was a huge disappointment today; usually I can spend a couple of hours there browsing through clothes, but we were there for all of ten minutes because their racks were so empty. There was a Goodwill just a couple of miles away so we tried that out as well. Their clothes have gotten so expensive that it would probably be cheaper to shop a clearance section of stores like Kohl's!

They had a TON of clothes and I definitely could have spent a long time browsing--but I wasn't about to spend $10 on a shirt that I couldn't even try on (the fitting rooms have been closed since the pandemic). I ended up getting a pair of jeans (thankfully, they fit) and a vegan cookbook, and Noah picked out a pair of pants and a sweatshirt.

We were driving right past our favorite Chinese restaurant (I say "favorite", but the last time we went there was probably six years ago) and I knew how much Noah loved their fried rice, so I asked if he wanted to get some to bring home. From there, we stopped at Kroger to grab a few things we needed, and then headed home. The day went by so fast!

Eli was supposed to have a double header baseball game today, but it was canceled and I couldn't be happier about that. Saturday, the temp was in the 80's and it was super sunny; today, we had sleet, then rain, then snow, and finally hail. The wind is ridiculous, too. The "real feel" for Eli's game would be in the 20's! I would have died sitting in that for five hours. Eli was relieved, too.


It has turned into a lazy family evening with Jerry off work and no baseball, work, or school for the kids. It feels so odd because it's rare that all of us are home at the same time. We're going to make homemade pizzas for dinner and maybe I can talk the kids into playing a game or watching a movie or something tonight.

It was so nice to be able to spend some one-on-one time with Noah today; he's grown up so much!

1 comment:

  1. Love this. Time is fleeting. So good you can spend some with them.

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