Raquel asked Mommy out for a FH'zzookie!

Last year Raquel read alot and got a coupon from school for a free FH'zzookie at the FireHouse Pizzaria.  We never remembered to use the coupon and the other day, Raquel found it on the fridge and asked me if there was a time that we could go and use it.  Thinking of her request, we decided as a family that with four weeks in a month, four kids, and two parents, we could arrange to have one parent-child date each week with Mom taking out the girls and Dad taking out the boys one month and switching the next month.  So, since Raquel was the instigator, we let her pick the first arrangement and went from there.  We are going to switch off girl-boy-girl-boy in a month, thus next week is Glenn's turn with Daddy and Allison's is the next week with Mommy, followed by Shane the final week with Daddy.  So we have finally really started something we have tried to do many times--but I think it will really work with this new arrangement.

And, this was so much fun. Raquel was not satisfied with just going for a FH'zzokie at the FireHouse Pizzaria. Not that she didn't enjoy it, but because she didn't want our "date" to end. So we went to Cache Valley Center for the Arts and I showed her my office (it wasn't that impressive, and I couldn't take her by the theatre because they had a production there tonight) and then she said she wanted to go walk around the temple grounds. We didn't stay too long, because it was cold outside, but it was sure neat. I asked Raquel if she had a goal of getting married in the temple, and she said she did. I encouraged her to reach that goal and not settle for anything less--if somebody loves you they should love you enough to marry you forever. And I told her about when Curtis and I had talked about getting married and he mentioned to me that wow, we were talking about forever. It was kind of a humbling realization, but also very special. After we were too cold to stay any longer, we went to the grocery store and picked up a few things and then had to come home--it was after all a school night! It was really neat to just have special time together. Raquel is really growing up, and we don't have alot of time to just talk, so tonight we caught up on some of that. And she was cute when we got home, she went in and told Allison all about it. It made me feel good that she had a good enough time to tell someone.