Just got home from an awesome mother/daughter weekend with my nine year old daughter, and just, wow, the memories made on this trip are just priceless. We drove down to cedar rapids yesterday morning and spent the morning exploring the city, taking in the beautiful architexture and museums as well as having a nice dinner together and then totally going gaga over the half price bookstore we found. I think we both could have moved in there for a week and still not explored everything. After the bookstore we found a park and took a stroll through it at around sunset, feeding the ducks and walking around their pond for awhile.

We sat up late last night drawing, reading and watching the Disney channel before falling asleep, had homemade waffles for breakfast (I’ve never made waffles from scratch before, that was neat, with the waffle iron and all though I nearly made a mess lol) We found a market filled with artisans and food venders and had a blast wandering through it and sampling things before we went to the art museum and spent almost three hours exploring the exhibits. She was really taken with the Roman busts, as well as the Grant Wood collection (he is the artist who did American Gothic)

Hearing her thoughts and impressions of the artwork helped me look at the pieces with different eyes and from a different point of view, and I love how excited she is to visit more museums, it isn’t something we have much opportunity for in the rural area where we live.

We capped the day off by seeing the Twin City Ballet’s performance of Cinderella, which was just beautifully done. She was captivated by the dancers and watched with rapt attention on the edge of her seat through the whole performance. I was so glad that the weather was gorgeous for our outing. So many times when we go places we have a full van so to speak, it was awesome to have time just her and I.