All in Blended Family Traditions
Last night the girls and I splurged and had dinner out at one of favorite places in Vegas, The TAO Asian Bistro.
Dinner with Hers and His Daughters!
My Hubby and I stumbled upon this amazing place a few years ago when we were here celebrating our wedding anniversary.
It's road trip day with my two favorite chickee's - Elle and Little Hart. We're leaving the boys behind!
Road Trip with the Girls
Our girls trips and boys trips have been a part of our family life almost since it's inception. The girls love to shop, shop and then shop some more - 11 hours is our record so far! The boys love watching every kind of sporting event under the sun. There is no sport they won't watch! On our family trips we try to get a good mix of what the girls and boys enjoy doing, but sometimes it's just fun to do what you enjoy doing all day and night long without feeling like the other half would rather shoot themselves. Thus, the separate trips.
Twelve years into our blended family - the trips are officially a Hartman Family tradition. A tradition that all the kids look forward to doing and talking about for years later. As you know, Elle is my daughter and Little Hart my step-daughter. The girls trips have really gone a long way in creating and cementing the bond between Elle and Little Hart, my relationship with Little Hart and the relationship between Mom and daughters. I really credit the trips for making our family closer as a whole closer.
Planning and actually going on the the Girls trips has taken coordination with the other families over the years, but a extra wrinkle has been that Little Hart is my step-daughter. Although I have always considered her my daughter, it's times like these that I'm reminded that I'm not in control of whether Little Hart can go on these trips. Raylan and Greta are.
Easter, Easter, Easter. It's the one holiday we have never had conflict with the other family; no every other year, split the day down the middle. Nothing. Mostly I would say this is do to the fact that majority of Easter's have been on the other families weekend and we have never really made a big deal about it.
The first year we realized that we wouldn't have the kids for Easter Sunday, we made an executive decision that the Easter Bunny would come the weekend before. EB decided to set an Easter Egg strategically in their bedrooms so when they woke up they might stumble upon it and wonder "What the Heck!" And that they did.
I'm starting a new thing called Tidbit Tuesday so I can share the meaningless and not so meaningless tidbits that I gleam from all my magazine reading. As you may have noticed, I have a new icon to go along with my theme day, thanks to the ever talented Elle! She created something I never could of done in a million years. Thanks Dahling!
I've had this idea since the inception of my blog. I mentioned in "My Story" that I a love to read magazines and share a lot of meaningless tidibits. So far that has been reserved for my family. They typically roll their eyes and make fun of me incessantly about it. However, since the kids have gotten older they have slowly come over to the dark side and have come up with their own meaningless or meaningful tidbits to share as well. They usually start off "I know I'm probably going to sound like Mom here, but I found out this........" So I guess it's not so meaningless after all. Ha!
