the date

It had been one of those days.

The kind where nothing goes right.

He pushes your buttons and if you were a good mother, you would have let it all slide and moved on, or said something calmly and rationally and profound...but that wasn't my reaction at all.

My patience was challenged and I was not the good mother I should have been.

After many tears had been shed and words had been yelled, I called up Kyle.

Bridger and I needed some alone time. I had been his crazy, yelling, angry mom all day, and he had been my disobedient, push-every-button-you-know-she-has son.

And while I believe in being my children's parent before being their friend... I do want them to know I love them and care for them and want to be friends with them too. And, to be fair, we both shared in the fault of the failure of the day.

I think with three children in the house it gets too easy to overlook when one of the kids needs some more attention. And this kid was screaming for it...literally and figuratively.

Kyle and I have talked many times about taking our kiddos out on dates with each of us individually, but we had never made the time.

So that night, I made time.

Kyle came home and took Porter and Ford and I headed out the door with Briggs.

I let him choose anywhere for dinner...his first choice was Del Taco. When I told him that he could choose anywhere, I started giving ideas. He thought every choice was better than the last. I could have persuaded him to go where ever I wanted. I told him to wait until I had listed all of the places that I could think of and then he could choose.  

When I said Pizza Factory, his eyes lit up. Bridger could eat breadsticks for breakfast, lunch and dinner and he knew that they had the biggest breadsticks he had ever eaten.

 We had a lovely dinner. We discussed school and who were his friends today (didn't realize until last year when Porter was in kindergarten that your friends change on a daily basis). We talked about dinosaurs and which one was his favorite.

Ankylosaurous, in case you were wondering.  He remembered the name of it from going to the dinosaur museum several months ago (the memory this kid has, is crazy).

He wants to be a paleontologist when he grows up  (something that has definitely changed from a few months ago when all he wanted to grow up to be was a bear).

We spent some time looking at different dinosaurs on my phone during dinner until the waitress showed up to give us the check and was clearly annoyed that we had ignored our dinners and were not quite ready to leave.

After dinner we headed to Funfinity. The games in this store make me swoon, and Bridger is in love with games. He constantly wants to play a new one and he finds ones that are a little too advanced for him and he wants to learn the rules anyway.

Funfinity was like Heaven for him.

And the kind owner of the store sat down with him and pulled out dozens of sample games and showed him how to play for over a half an hour. (Didn't get a picture of said owner, I need to get over the fear of pulling out my camera in public).

 After a long decision making process, we settled on Battle Sheep.

 We made our purchase and headed to SubZero for dessert...and a game.

 We ate ice cream and figured out how our new game was played.

And by the end of the night we were having so much fun I couldn't even remember what we had been yelling or fighting about all day. This little guy is adorable, sweet, funny and a real character.

I love him so, so much.

And I like him oodles and oodles too.

He makes a pretty awesome date.