Hanging with my Daughter

This past Tuesday I had the opportunity to spend some quality time with my youngest daughter. First we went to a neighboring town to check out their Farmer's Market. It was kind of lame. Seeing as this is only July in the Midwest most of the good veggies aren't ready yet. There were potatoes, onions and lettuce. But no berries, no corn or tomatoes. So nothing that interested us. I thought my daughter would want to head right home, as it was pretty hot out and she wasn't overly thrilled coming with me in the first place. (But she did come willingly!)

Imagine my surprise when she wanted to stay and walk around the "Square". The Farmer's Market we went to is located in a historic part of this neighboring town. They have an area in town set up as a square. There are many shops and an old theater. It has cobblestone streets. Very cool area of town. If you have seen "Groundhog Day", then you have seen this square. It was filmed there.

So anyway, nothing exciting at the farmer's market, so we hit the stores. There is a great little candy shop which we hit first. They have the most delightful malted milk balls you have ever had. They are like triple dipped in chocolate....delicious. So of course we bought a pound of those. Then we continued on and ended up at the bakery. (Can you tell we were hungry?) We each got a donut. Then we went to a local Hallmark store and looked at Croc's and Webkinz. Isn't it funny how Hallmark stores sell Croc's? Then it was on to a mini indoor mall. There was a school/office supply store, I bought my daughter some pastels. There was a fabric shop and we looked around at all the fabric. There was also sandwich shop, but we decided the sandwich's looked too expensive and fancy for our tastes.

Outside the mini mall, back on the square we hit a book store. After that we realized we had "done" the square. We were back where we started. We still had our donuts, so we decided to venture into the park in the middle of the square to eat them. In the park area there is a gazebo where bands can play. There was a family band (mom, dad, daughter and what looked like grandma up there), they were playing mostly 60's hits. So we sat on a bench in the park and just enjoyed the atmosphere for a little while.

We decided to hit the road and head for home. On the way out of town, I remembered there was an antique mall that we would pass by. I figured dear daughter was tired and would just want to head home, but imagine my surprise when she was excited about going to the antique mall.

The mall is a collection of consignors so there is quite a variety of things to look at. It's all one space, so you don't leave one store for another. Once you are in you are in. It had an upstairs and down. We spent 1 1/2 hours wandering around this mall. My daughter is enamoured with all things old. She loves old sitcoms, she loves old history. She was just fascinated by some of the antiques. I guess I should have taken her to an antique store before now. We looked at furniture and toys and books. We spent a lot of time looking at old books. We looked at jewelry and old clothes. I saw some things that were around in my youth, and I had fun telling my daughter how I used to use some of the things. I showed her things I remembered my grandmother owning. And she actually wanted to listen and hear about it. (Not everything in the mall is a true antique, but it's all older than her).

Finally in the end, after I told her I would buy her something if she wanted, she settled on a piggy bank. She has decided she wants to start collecting piggy banks. This is only her second piggy bank, so we have more piggy shopping to do. There is a town about 1/2 hour north of me that is known for it's antique stores. I mentioned to my daughter that we should go sometime and she was excited about it. She wants to spend another day antiquing with her mom.

I feel like the days of my kids wanting to pal around with me are waning. As I said at the beginning, when we first set out on our adventurous day, she wasn't too keen on joining me. She actually tried to bail at the last minute, but then I think she felt bad because she had told me she wanted to come. But in the end I know she had a really nice time, and so did I. We didn't play video games or watch TV or even see a movie. We walked around a historic square, looked in shops, talked to each other. We explored other people's old stuff and talked about what their lives must have been like. We made plans to do it again. Man I love my kids.