Today I was able to go out on a date. And it was not with my wife either. Scandalous you say? Hardly. My date was with my daughter Rebekah.

I try, as often as I can, to take time to spend with my kids individually to sort of gauge how they are doing in our family. I like to get their point of view to see how they are seeing what is happening in our household and in the affairs of the Gonzalez family. There is so much insight to be gained from the experiences of a child if you take the time to dig deep enough to find it. I love taking some time every now and again to get back in touch with my kids.

That said, this is something that I have been planning for a while now. I already had a date with Sarah a while ago and it was my intent to have one with all of my kids shortly after that. For some reason that never happened. Until today.

So we had made small plans to go out to get something to eat and maybe grab a coffee or something. We ended up going to this great little burrito place in Newark and eating these freaking hugemongous burritos that I could barely finish (but Bekah kept up pretty well). Then we headed to the mall to try to find a card for my brother for his birthday party tomorrow. After a few laps around the place and a quick browse of the Hallmark store we found a card and headed to the Starbucks for fraps. Then we walked more.

All in all we spent about three hours out and about having fun, eating, getting coffee and talking. Yes, talking. The entire point of the date was so that I could reconnect with her, get a feel for what was going on with her as of late and see if things are manageable in her life. And it sounded like they were.

Altogether it was an awesome day and an awesome date. We had a good time, were able to talk, were able to laugh and were able to just spend some time with each other. Which was desperately needed for the two of us.