Surprise Anniversary Dinner

I'm going to brag a little bit today and tell you a story about my girls. Yesterday, as you know, Brandon and I celebrated our anniversary. The girls decided days ago that they were going to make it special for us. Why? Could it be because I've always emphasized special treatment on birthdays? On Mother's/Father's Day? Perhaps. It could just be that my girls are awesome, though. Because I never even THOUGHT about doing for my parents what they did for us. Brandon confessed that neither did he!

So, what did our girls do?

First, they made us stay in bed and brought us breakfast (toast, trail mix, yogurt, kefir smoothies).

Second, they made us dinner later that night. But it wasn't just ANY dinner. They set up a table in the basement for our "romantic dinner" complete with a family photo, a basket of flowers, and my cell phone inside the basket playing Classical music:

(Sorry, their heads are cut off; Brandon was just trying to get the table in the shot)

On the table were name cards, treasure boxes (with chocolate chips in them), and menus:

Inside the menus were our options for dinner (not included were the "sides of the day" including fruit and veggies):

(Sorry about the wrong rotation on the photo. I tried to rotate it several times, but it just won't save the right way!)

Brandon had the Nacho Blast and Water with some apples and peanut butter on the side. I had the Veggie Attack, Pasta's Doom, Water, and an orange on the side. (And just fyi, nachos is a popular dish in our home, so the girls made them from scratch, but the pasta and salad were leftovers from the night before.)

#2 was the main waiter and took our orders --even refilling our water happily! --and #1 was the main "cook" up in the kitchen. We enjoyed a nice, quiet dinner and we couldn't stop talking about how our girls always blow us away with their kindness and ideas.

It didn't end there, though. The girls then had us play a version of "the newly-wed game" (I won, btw) and it was hilarious!

I'm told constantly by school teachers, Primary teachers, neighbors, and their friends' parents how we are such good parents because our kids are so good. I usually say thank you, but I have to remind them that our children are amazing in SPITE of us. Honestly, they are! We don't know where they get half of their awesomeness, because we fail so often.

Somebody once told me that when our kids do bad things or make wrong choices (he was talking about big mistakes) then it's not our fault as parents and we shouldn't blame ourselves. But then he said if our kids are awesome-sauce and make amazing choices and are super-duper righteous or whatever, then we can be grateful we were such great parents.

What the?!

I don't agree at all. If we can't take the blame for our kids' mistakes, then we certainly can't take all the credit for their successes. Yes, I think parental influence has --haha! --an influence on both situations --how could it not? --but, but, but, there is that fancy little word called "agency," and need to acknowledge when our kids practice their own, and then praise them when they make great choices.

Needless to say, our girls made some very sweet and thoughtful choices yesterday. I asked #1 later last night, "What made you guys decide to do something so kind for us?"

She said, "We think it's fun!"

Man, I love those girls.