wednesday for the win

i have always wanted to go to the tulip festival up north but have never made it. so this year i was determined to make it happen. but as life goes, the days have passed by, and the tulip fields have started to close for the season. so i knew that i didn't have many chances left to check it out, and i wanted to take malena so that she could see the tulip fields as well.

but our weekends are already booked, so that left only weekdays. weekdays are work days which make them pretty impossible to take off.

so i went back and forth on whether to take a day to head up there, mostly due to the fact that i have about one million work deadlines weighing on me (ok, a million might be dramatic, more like 999,999 deadlines. seriously. ugh).

but here is the thing. deadlines can be met by staying up a little later or getting up a little earlier (i hope that my brother isn't reading this) and really focusing on how to use my time. priorities can be determined, meetings can be moved, there are ways to make it all happen. it just takes dedication to actually get it done. and as you know, i am all about dedication to get things done.

but tulips only bloom certain times of the year. adventures with your 6 year old don't happen on their own. you have to make them happen.

so that is what i did today.

i did not go into the office and instead i let her sleep in a little bit while i worked. then we got ready and headed out for our big day. her first request was donuts for breakfast (a good start to any road trip day). so we stopped and she picked out a chocolate maple bar (just like her momma would if she could eat them -- damn you gluten). while we were waiting in the line, the cashier looked over and gave her a big smile. he told her to go over to where the lillies where and to pick one out for her and one out for me. and so she did, and he gave us the lillies for free as he rang up her donut. i love nice people. big time. as her and i were waiting in a different line for a tea for me, i saw the same man go over and give a lilly to another woman and she too smiled as big as we did. she said that she was so surprised and told him that he made her day. he told her that his manager told him that if wanted to, he could give the lillies away since they had so many left and they weren't going to last much longer. he said that when he was given permission to do that, he wanted to make as many people happy as he could and decided to have fun with surprising customers with the lillies. he is my new most favorite cashier in the whole wide world (even more than the one at a different store who cards me when i buy hard ciders).

random kindness to start our day and we loved it. the lillies are gorgeous.

we then headed up to the tulip fields and they were awesome. the amount of tulips was amazing, the place that we went to is the largest grower in the world. 1000 acres of blooms. it is absolutely incredible.

we walked around in the gorgeous pnw sunshine and took it all in. reds. yellows. purples. combinations of colors i had never seen before. malena guessing at how many tulips there were (momma, i think that there are ten zillion five hundred ninety six and five and ten tulips) and being my tour guide by making sure that we covered every place on the map.

as we walked around the fields and she held my hand, i was so glad that i chose to go on this adventure.

the reports, emails, and the deadlines will all be there tomorrow (unfortunately).

but i know all too well that a perfect day in the sunshine to hold hands with my girl as we check out ten zillion tulips may not be.

today was a great one.

i will never see a tulip again without thinking of this day.

i really love that.