Esther's day

Our 10 year old Esther Hope has always been my free thinking, tree hugging, peace loving kinda chick. We joke that since she hates to brush her hair and loves warm weather she will probably end up by the ocean one day, with her hair in dreadlocks, selling her art. She is my hippie chick. I love her carefree spirit in most ways, but the one way I have had problems it with was her room. As in it looking like a bomb blew up in there most days. And she never cared that she couldn't  find anything ( including her bed!) because of the junk. So I would about every 2 weeks weeks rant and fuss and help her clean it. Only for it to be a mess the next day. 

Well a few months ago I came up with a plan. See, her love language is TIME and so I proposed something to her. I printed out a calendar of the month of April and told her that for every night I came to tuck her in and her room was clean, I would mark a star on that day. If she could make it all month.. ...We would have an Essie & Mommy day. And she could plan it. She was so excited with her cool calendar and her stars and believe it or not...her room stayed picked up ( even vacuumed) for a WHOLE month.

So she planned our day. We would go to the craft store and look at cupcake stuff ( AC Moore), go to a Mongolian Grill for lunch, Go see Chimpanzees the movie and go get Frogurt. Big Date!!  

And we had a blast! She bought some cupcake sprinkles to make cupcakes with, we had a yummy lunch and then we went to the movie and the coolest thing happened...no one was in the theater with us! It was like we had rented it out or something. Essie ran up on down the aisles, yelled out during the movie..we had a BLAST! Then a quick stop off for some FroYo and we went home with her declaring it "the best date EVER" and she wanted to try the calendar for May again and have a date with daddy. 

Going to see the movie. Oh and its not a date if you don't wear a hat, right??) 

Eating some yummy FroYo.

So all of May, she kept her room clean again. Ya'll don't understand..this child had food, and stuffed animals, trash, art work.. even panties and pj's stuffed everywhere for the last 9 years and now every night her room is spotless!  

So she planned her date with daddy. Greg said all she wanted was more Frogurt. That was all she asked for with him. So he talked her into lunch too and she said a burger and so he took her to Wendys and got her a happy meal with apple slices and chocolate milk and Greg said it was like he had taken her out for a gourmet meal. Then they had FroYo and he said is there anything else or anywhere else you would like to go and she  thought about it and then said, " the store with the big tvs and computers where you can see your self on the screens." ( Best Buy). :)    

So he took her to Best Buy and let her just play around..... she never asked for a thing, but when they were leaving they had these cool game characters that the boys like and Essie always plays with theirs and so Greg told her she could pick on out..... from the picture, you can see how excited she was! 

Enjoying Frogurt again.... Essie's fav! 

She came home and told me it was , "the BEST Essie &  Daddy day EVER" and wanted a June Calendar so she can  keep her from clean another month and plan the next date with me.

Love that girl and her fun way of looking at life!

* We offered this to the boys and Abby, but none of them seem to think a date with me was worth the pressure of keeping your room clean a whole month. LOL!