My friend Elizabeth is Catholic, so she gets to do cool stuff like give things up for Lent.
"You're giving up swearing? That's cool," I say to her.
"You can give up stuff, too," she replies.
Uh-oh. Maybe I shouldn't have started this conversation.
Next thing I knew, I'd committed to go without my favorite thing for 40 days--potato chips.
Because it's my goal, I can make up my own rules. No potato chips means no potato chips or any other kind of chips--Doritos, Sun Chips, Cheetos, etc. However, I am allowing myself tortilla chips (no, I do not consider Doritos to be a tortilla chip; I'm not actually sure what they are).
It's been hard--especially since one of my very skinny coworkers often walks around with a full-size bag of Lays, carrying it like a lunch sack--but I'm almost there. Easter is the end date. I'll celebrate with a bag of chips.
Learning to ride a bike hasn't been easy for Paige. (She can blame most of that on the uncoordinated genes she got from her parents.) But now that it's getting warmer outside, she's been excited to try out the new bike that Santa delivered.
The task is further complicated by having a little brother. Curtis was very interested in Paige's biking lessons. He spent all yesterday riding his scooter behind us as I hung onto to Paige (and to dear life) as we rode up and down the sidewalk. Today, however, he was a little less helpful.
As Paige and I went up and down the street, Curtis would run parallel up the sidewalk, roaring in his monster voice or randomly shouting, "STOPPPPPP! STOPPPPP!"
When Paige was finally able to tune out those distractions, he moved to Plan B.
One by one, he strategically placed rocks on the street, until he had created a barrier extending from our driveway to about halfway across the street.
"Curtis," I said, "No more rocks in the street, buddy."
"No," he said defiantly. "I'm not moving the rocks until you crash the bike."
Such a great little helper.
Despite his best efforts, we avoided all of his pitfalls. Paige even managed to stay upright most of our session (she only ran into one parked car and only fell down once). In fact, the only injury was sustained by me.
I have trouble blogging about the things that I want to write about the most. When something big happens, I always think, "I should sit down and really give this the attention that it deserves." But there's just never enough time, so I usually end up skipping it entirely.
I had one of those big deal experiences last year that I never wrote about. My first daddy daughter date with Paige.
When Paige brought a flyer home from school advertising the dance, I wasn't too keen on the idea. I was pretty sure that I hadn't danced since college, I didn't even really like doing it back then. But I could tell she really wanted to go.
When we walked into the high school, all dolled up in our nice clothes, I had no idea what to expect. Would we be overdressed? Under dressed? The only ones there? The answers were no, no, and no.
The place was absolutely packed. After checking our coats (that's what you do at a classy joint like Kearns High School), Paige heard the music and literally sprinted out onto the gym floor. Before I knew it, she was dancing at warped speed in giant circles around the dance floor. I couldn't hope to keep up with her; I could barely even keep an eye on where she was going.
I don't think we could have possibly had a better night. So of course it had to become an annual tradition.
Paige was so excited about the dance that she made this comic strip (and even took the self portraits).
This year, my friend Brett and his two daughters came along with us. We showed up early so we could get our pictures taken before the dance started. The picture line was already out the door by the time we got there. We were still waiting when the dance began, so we let the girls going into the gym by themselves (this dance was at Paige's elementary and was much less hectic than at the high school). After a few minutes, Paige came out and said, "Daaaad, we don't need to wait for the pictures. WE NEED TO DANCE!"
They played all of Paige's favorite tunes--Call Me Maybe, We Are Never Getting Back Together, Gangnam Style--mixed in with some Macarena and YMCA.
Luckily, Paige's dancing-in-circles was confined a smaller space this year, but she still managed to sneak away from me. I looked down just in time to see her getting whisked away by a conga line (which looked more like a really long, slow moving caterpillar of delirious little girls) that kept on going for several songs.
Here's the great thing about the daddy/daughter dance. You would think that you'd look/feel like an idiot dancing to Justin Bieber in an elementary school cafeteria. But you don't. You're are in room filled with lots of different dads--from those who still know The Electric slide (I mean, really know it) to the scary dad with the giant face tattoos--who all just really love their daughters.
Once again, Paige had the time of her life.