A Date with Dad

I forgot to post about this earlier, but thought I'd do it now, while I was thinking about it. We've heard and read over and over how important the father-daughter relationship is. And now that Emma is getting older, we wanted to think of a way to help foster that. (We'll do it with Ashlyn, too, when she gets a little older.) One idea we liked was to have the Dad take the daughter out on a "date" each month on the day of their birthday. So, since Emma was born on the 2nd, then she and Dakota will go out each month on the 2nd.

This month was the first of what we hope will become regular daddy-daughter dates, and I loved what Dakota thought of this time around. Emma loves to go to the mall and get pizza at the food court. She also likes to play around with our old digital camera and take pictures of everything. So they headed to the mall for their lunch date.


The pizza there is HUGE! Usually I split a piece with her, but he let her have it all to herself.


After lunch, Dakota gave Emma the camera and let her wander around taking pictures of whatever caught her eye. He just had one rule--no taking pictures of people--she obeyed it, most of the time. She had a fantastic time going around finding things to take pictures of. And she was so excited to show me the pictures when she came home. At just three and a half feet tall, her perspective is much different than mine, so I'm always interested to see what she has captured. I put a collage together of some of her favorites:


There were lots of pictures of shoes. (Should I be worried?) There were also several pictures of clothes, dresses, left over Christmas decorations, and toys. Her favorite one was the picture on the bottom, with the stuffed animals sitting on the lit up boxes.

Dakota said lots of people noticed her taking pictures, but just smiled or laughed or asked if she was testing out a new Christmas present. What a fun and inexpensive date idea. Kudos to Dakota for thinking that one up.