Steven Day!

Steven works so hard during the week - between being a Daddy, a student, and a VP at his Dad's company - that he takes a half-day on Fridays. I thought it was so sweet that he was making his family his priority on his least busy day of the week, so I declared it Steven Day! Steven's such a wonderful husband and father that he always puts us before himself. It's easy to take this for granted, so I thought we should take a day to honor the sacrifices he makes for our family. I cringed a little bit when I offered this idea to him... I had visions of spending hours upon hours in guitar stores, watching the Military Channel, or (worse yet!) being ditched in favor of one of his single friends. Still, I knew that he deserved to be put first for a change.

I wasn't surprised when Steven's first suggestion was to go to a museum - he is such a history buff! His first choice was the Firefighter Museum in Dallas, but he decided that he'd rather stay in the area and we finally settled on Heritage Farmstead right here in Plano. If you've never been to Plano, you've probably never heard of it. If you grew up in Plano, however, you spent LOTS of field trips here. LOTS. In fact, the last owner of the property was my middle school's namesake. They've preserved the area to give people a glimpse in to farm life in Plano in the late 1800's.

Before going to Heritage Farmstead, we had to eat. Steven asked what I wanted and I responded "It's Steven Day!" He decided to go to Country Burger, one of his favorite places to eat... and one of my least favorites. But, it was Steven Day, so we went to Country Burger on our way to Heritage Farmstead.

One big reason Steven chose Heritage Farmstead - they have animals! We saw sheep, a goat, chickens, two donkeys, and a turkey (I think...!). He thought that Jackson would enjoy seeing some farm animals up close. It's funny to see Jackson's reaction to animals change as he gets older. He used to basically ignore them, but now he's very wary of them. He really can't stand dogs barking, which always sends him in to a bit of a panic. His favorite animal in the world is our cat, Maru, who lives with my mom right now. I think Jackson likes him because Maru is completely uninterested in him. Completely. He is much more interested in getting his slaves (aka Steven & me!) back from the small, pink thing (aka Jackson).

Anyways, the animals weren't really a hit with Jackson, but for me the backdrop was! I realized recently that we don't have any recent pictures of our whole family. The last time we had a family picture together was when our church took directory photos. We haven't even received the directory yet, but Jackson has already grown up and shed a lot of baby fat! So, I thought this would be a perfect place to take pictures, with all the charm of an old (Texan!) farmhouse. It also means a lot because this city has been home to four generations of Steven's family, and 3 generations of mine. This was the one deviation from Steven Day - the picture monster took over! We got some great pictures of our little family. I would like to go back (on Ally Day? haha) and have an actual person take the pictures, rather than our camera timer.

After we left Heritage Farmstead, Steven wanted to check out a new store near my mom's house. It sells collegiate wear, and we were sure that we could find some UNT gear. Sadly, they only sell 5 of the Big 12 teams - UT, A&M, Tech, OU, and Baylor. No UNT or CU! We were disappointed, and after driving down to Frisco with the intention of looking at flooring for our new house, Steven decided to call it a day. He decided that Blockbuster and home were next on the agenda for Steven Day. So we picked up a couple DVDs at Blockbuster (even though it was Steven Day, I got to choose one of the videos - yay!) and headed over to Market Street to pick up some supplies for the Steven Day dinner... which was of course, steak.

Finally, we came home, put Jackson to bed, and had a delicious steak dinner, complete with scallops (it's Steven Day), basil garlic mushrooms, and (delicious!!) mashed potatoes. Since it was Steven Day, we skipped the salad. After dinner we watched Steven's movie together. It was a great day and I love that Steven chose to spend his day with us, doing things we could all enjoy.