Daddy Daughter Dates

We love to spend time doing things with our kids.  It sometimes gets a little crazy doing things with all 4 of them.  So a while back, I started trying to do what we call Daddy Daughter Dates.  These are times when I take just one of them and do something special with them.  It is nice to get out with just one daughter so we can actually talk about stuff and not be interrupted.  We usually do something that we do not do as a family or cannot do as a family.  It does not happen as often as we would like but we really enjoy the times we do. 
Just recently I took each of the older two girls on separate trips to Borders Bookstore in Corvallis.  They each got to search through the entire store and pick out something that they want to buy.  Then we went to the coffee shop and had some hot chocolate and a cookie.  They were both very excited to go there but it was interesting to see the differences in them in picking something out.  Emma went right to a specific section and had picked out a couple books she wanted in about 5 minutes.  We looked around for a while after that, but she still just wanted those same books. Riah, on the other hand, wandered all over the store looking at everything for about and hour and a half and could not decide between a lot of stuff.  Finally she decided on an umbrella and a journal.  We all enjoyed the time together, and we got to find a few geocaches while in Corvallis as well!
One of my favorite Daddy Daughter Dates was a month or so ago with Riah.  We were able to borrow some kayaks from a friend and went kayaking on Cheadle lake here in Lebanon.  Here are some pictures from our adventure.

Here is Riah in her kayak next to the dock.  She was excited to try this, but nervous at the same time.  I helped her get into the kayak and she looked worried.  Then she asked if we had to do this.  I told her we did not have to and asked if she wanted to get out.  Still looking worried she said she would try, but would it be okay if we only went a little ways.  No problem, I told her we could stop whenever she wanted to.  So I put mine in the water and climbed in and we were off.  She decided pretty quickly that it was not only not that bad, but actually kinda fun!

 By the end, she was really enjoying paddling around the lake.

 Daddy, look at me!

 Enjoying a peaceful moment on the lake.

 Our expert paddler.

Now she has done something that her older sister has not done!

 Here she is coming back into the dock.

Her is my GPS with the track of where we went.  Of course there was some geocaches to get from the kayaks as well!  We spent about 1.5 hours on the lake then got some lunch and ice cream.  We enjoyed it so much that we want to get some kayaks of our own and do this more often!  Just cannot wait to see what kind of adventure the next Daddy Daughter Dates will bring.  (Emma wants to go kayaking too now.) 

You want how much for a maple bar?

A couple Saturdays ago, we decided to take the whole family to lunch in Eugene and see a movie.  We had some burgers at this burger place near Valley River Center that were pretty good and then went to see Gnomeo and Juliet.  Everyone enjoyed the movie.  After the movie, we decided to go try some donuts at a place we have heard about on TV that makes some interesting donuts.  There is one in Portland and another one in Eugene.  The doughnut we have heard about it the Bacon Maple bar and we really wanted to try one.  Once we found the place and went in, with our 4 daughters, we discovered that it is not a great place for kids.  There was some things on the walls for decoration that I did not really need to see.  Then we found out that it is cash only.  All we had was about $6.00.  You would think that would get you a few donuts, but they are very proud of their donuts.  The Bacon Maple Bar was $2.75 for 1 donut!  They had a Banana fritter with chocolate and peanut butter topping that was $3.99!  So we got 3 cheaper donuts just to try and left.  We will probably never go back.  Now if you do the math, there are 6 people in our family and only 3 donuts, and one of those donuts was for someone else.  Since the kids were really looking forward to having donuts we decided we would make some at home!  After all, the Bacon Maple Bar was nothing more than a Maple Bar with 2 strips of bacon on it.  We can do that!

I think Riah is doing an "I like doughnuts dance" here!

 Here the batter has been made, doughnuts cut and rising.  Just getting ready to cook them.  Next step is deep frying them.

Yumm!

Once they were cooked we had to put some sort of topping on them.  The kids had some ideas and we had some ideas so we tried a few different things.

Some of them we covered in powdered sugar.

Then we put some raspberry jelly inside a few.  One of the ideas the girls had was to fill up the hole with mini marshmallows.

You know we had to do the Bacon Maple bar!

The doughnuts are all done cooking now.  We could not put the maple frosting on when they just came out, so we were waiting for them to cool a little before finishing those.

 The girls also wanted to put Cheerios on some.

These are what I was waiting for.  The Bacon topped Maple bar.  They were really good!

Here we are torturing the kids, telling them that they could not have any until morning!  (We did actually let them have one before they went to bed. Notice the Tornado is still moving too fast to be in focus in the picture, as usual.)

Here was all the doughnuts we made.  It cost less to make all these than to buy 1 Bacon Maple bar at that other place, and our house is kid friendly!  We could start our own bakery making doughnuts to sell, but I think we would eat all our profits and it would not be good for our waists!