Mother/Daughter Decades Dinner & Dance

At the beginning of the school year, I joined a Moms-in-Touch prayer group for the 4th grade girls at our kids' school.  We meet every month to pray and every other month our daughters join us for devotions, prayer, crafts and outreach opportunity.  It has been such a blessing to our family as it gives much needed opportunities to bond with my daughter and with other moms. (Gift #477)  This month our moms/daughters group attended a mother/daughter decades dress dinner and dance party instead.

At the beginning of this month, our daughter was supposed to attend a father/daughter dance at a church with some new friends from school & church who attend it every year.  I gave them money for the tickets which they had purchased for us, but during the process of delivering them to our daughter at school, our friend's daughter lost them.  The mom offered to let our family go in their place, but we insisted that they go since it is their tradition, not ours.  Our daughter was very disappointed, but I assured her that God is faithful to reward us when we do what honors him.  She still got to enjoy a nice date night out with her daddy (see photo at the end of this post).  So, when this opportunity came for me to take her to a different dance, I saw it as God's reward to her. Instead of attending a dance with her dad she got a dinner date with her dad AND a dinner/dance with her mama and lots of school friends.  What a gift that evidence of God's faithfulness to His promises was to our little girl. (Gift #478)

Malachi 3:10  (NIV)

¹⁰ Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.

During the party, the moms talked about ways we can involve our children in ministering to the needy locally and abroad, and I shared about ministries dear to my heart.  I have a vision for projects we can do to support this awesome ministry our church life class is so heavily involved in now and feel a strong burden to get our kids involved in lots of ministry opportunities to expand their perspective of the world and better understand their place in it (ie, the world does not revolve around them!)  This blog post describes my desire for my kids much better and gives a concrete example.  Interestingly, after sharing about this ministry at our mother/daughter party on Saturday, our life class Skyped with the 35 Ugandan boys who have been rescued from the streets in the slums to be raised in forever homes centered in Christ. (Gift #479)

 

 The boys even led us in extended worship with their large steel drums during our Skype session. (Gift #480)

The mother/daughter party was a blast.  It had a decades theme, so we were supposed to come dressed in the style of our favorite decade. My daughter had a 20's outfit she wore in a play at school last year, so I tried to put together something like a flapper outfit to match although I cannot say that the 20's were my favorite decade.  At the last minute, she ended up deciding to wear a poodle skirt her grandmother made her years ago (even though it was much too small in the waist), so our decade outfits did not match, but at least we arrived at the party in festive clothing.

The church hosting the party did a great job carrying out the theme.  Dinner was 50's diner style with burger baskets and fries and old fashioned coke bottles like they still serve at a nostalgic diner drive-in in my hometown.  As one who writes a health column with two different articles devoted to the dangers of soda, it was hard to let my girl down a Sprite, but we were making memories to strengthen our bond, so I let it go while sipping water myself.  Then I had to let go again when they served coke floats for dessert. :-)

 

An elderly mother of three shared a devotion of sorts with the girls before we headed out to all the fun stations. In the crafts room, we made 70's style tie-dye socks and ironed together bead art.  My daughter wanted to make a happy face, so I was glad she picked something simple for this craft phobic parent to do.

My favorite venue at the party was the dance instruction.  We learned the 50's swing, the hustle, various line dances and marches.  It was so fun to dance together with my girl and to laugh with the other moms.  It seemed as though the dance steps got easier with each new decade which makes me wonder if the younger generations simply aren't coordinated enough to keep up with the older folks on the dance floor.  :-)
 
We worked up a sweat during all the dancing, so we were looking unkempt (note how askew my sleeves are in the photos below) by the time we got to the professional photography station. I let my daughter come up with the crazy poses for these photos and made an interesting observation when we got the photos back from the photographer.  When the kids sit for professional portraits, they almost always wear fake, plastic smiles, but when my daughter choreographed the poses, her smiles were wide and genuine, whereas mine were plastic.  I guess I need to start letting the kids set up our family photo shots if I want to capture their true personalities through the camera lens.