35. Go on an awesome date with my oldest daughter
This is Grace, my oldest daughter.
Grace is a vibrant thirteen year-old who is currently in her last year of middle school. She spends most of her time in her room either playing guitar or cultivating one of her many One Direction-focused Instagram accounts. For a few hours this past Saturday, I was able to coax her out of her space and out on a date with her dear old dad.
Our date started by my picking her up and bringing her a half dozen roses. Not only did she look wonderful with her curled hair (a new thing), her make-up (an even newer thing), but she also looked radiant in the dress that I had made for her for my Forty List.
To start our date, we headed to downtown Woodstock, which is about twenty minutes north of our house. The main street in Woodstock is a nice little place with a variety of restaurants and shops; the area also has a small park with a fountain and a gazebo. Much to our great luck, not only was it a beautiful Saturday afternoon, but the little town was bustling about – all primed up for the FREE Marshall Tucker Band concert later that evening. Needless to say, in my tie and clothes and her in her dress, we looked sorely out of place.
We immediately headed over to the Elm Street Cultural Arts Village. The village's centerpiece is an old church that has been converted into a theater. We settled ourselves in for a production of All In The Timing. The play was a series of five comedic one acts that varied from three monkeys trying to type Shakespeare to a man conning people out of money by teaching them a completely made up language. Both mine and Grace's favorite was a piece called Variations on the Death of Trotsky. It's basically about the death of Leon Trotsky and the guy plays the entire thing with a mountain climbing pick sticking out of his skull. Funny stuff.
After the play, we headed out to main street and I took her on a little shopping excursion. We went to a handful of shops and I bought her a bracelet and clutch purse that matched her dress.
We needed to be quick about the shopping as we still needed to get something to eat before all of the Marshall Tucker devotees descended on the area making escape impossible. So, we headed across the street to a nice Italian restaurant, Vingenzo's. I had eaten there once before. They are a fancy little spot that makes their own mozzarella cheese and their pizzas aren't of the crappy Pizza Hut/Domino's variety, but produced with real ingredients and baked in a fiery brick oven.
The two of us thoroughly enjoyed a sample of their Bufala Mozzarella with Sopressata; and we paired that with their authentic “la margherita” pizza.
With bellies full of pizza goodness, we quickly skirted out of Woodstock and headed over to the Avenues in East Cobb for some more shopping.
We spent a good bit of time smelling all the scents in the Yankee Candle store, dropped our jaws at the prices for common household items at Williams Sonoma, and rounded out our Avenues trip with an amazing cup of frozen yogurt at Menchies. In one of those moments of sheer perfection, we sat outside on a cool September night, watched the sun go down and had ate the heck out of some cake batter yogurt topped with Kit-Kats, chocolate chips and graham cracker crumbs.
Of course, she still had $20 to spend, so we swung by Target on the way home, and picked up a DVD of the Regular Show Halloween special, a 4-pack of Jones Candy Corn soda and a box of Mike and Ikes. All told, it was about the most amazing date a forty-year old dad could have with his amazing teenage daughter.