Mommy-In-The-Making Weekend

I call our every other weekend visits by my step-daughter as "mommy-in-the-making visits" all though I don't refer to myself as her mom, and try to avoid explaining our situation at all costs, its nice to have a pre-teen around to prove to myself that I will be a good mom and that my time will come sooner or later (hopefully sooner)

My step-daughter (abbreviated as SD or MSD) is 11 now, I've been around since she was 3 turning 4 and boy was she adorable when she was little. The age difference between her and I is  15 years, meaning that I was a sophomore in high school when she was "conceived" yikes right? Anyway.. moving on. This weekend was kind of our "fun" weekend, all though I try hard to not spoil her whenever she is here. I try to instill some sense of normalcy in schedules etc as much as possible so she will grow to understand that this is not a "play house" this is our home and she needs to be apart of the family when she is here (even though our "family" right now is my husband and I and our animals.. whatever still a family). I try at least once a month to have a "girl" weekend with her where I take her to do something fun, shopping, pedicure or something. This weekend, was going to be our "girl" weekend, and in between my crappy work schedule (I worked this weekend) I tried to take some time out of each day to get in our "girl" time.

Friday night, I was told by my husband that MSD was told by her volleyball coach last minute that they were having a day at the local pizza place. It would start at noon and to bring enough $$$ for a drink. I was not too happy about this last minute shenanigans that the coach was pulling, but I didn't want MSD to be punished and not able to participate because of a last minute attempt for some team bonding. I put on my happy face and took her to the pizza place on Saturday. Long story short, out of a team roster of about 30-40 only 6 girls showed up. (Looks like the other parents didn't feel the same way I did) So instead of leaving her with the coach and a gang of girls, I ended up staying and lurking as the creepy Step-Mom but she didn't mind. She pretty much stuck by my side the entire time and didn't mingle as much as I had hoped.

After Pizza we went shopping at Ross and Marshalls (my two favorite places) and checked out a new shoe store that has a bunch of shoes for $10.00 or less (there's a reason why they are cheap btw) and made our way home. All in all this was about a 3 1/2 hour experience out of our day and I was happy enough that I was able to hammer out some time in the day to still spend time with her.

I am lucky enough to be able to get into the local gem, mineral and lapidary shows in our area as one of the "perks" of my job. All though I go for a few hours one day to purchase for our company, I was able to bring MSD to the show in town to be able to see what its like first hand. The amount of beads, stones and varying options around you is mind boggling. I wonder what its like at her age, even now and being around the industry for a few years now, walking into the shows and looking through the mounds of beads each vendor brings still boggles my mind. All though she's really not as "young" as she once was (neither am I) its still cool to sometimes get glimpses of first-time experiences since I'm not around her a lot. Hopefully, this will go down as one of the things she remembers about her child years when she's grown up. I would love to keep this up as a tradition and I even let her buy a couple beads, just so she could pick out some cool stuff that she will probably never use.