DATE NIIIIIIGHT

It's been a coon's age since Todd and I had a date night just to ourselves. True, last month Alex went to her grandparents' house for an overnight, but that was for my triathlon, and nothing about getting up at 4am to go do 15 miles' worth of varied sports is very romantic. Badass, yes, but not romantic.

Anyways, in a last minute sort of conversation with Todd's mom last week, it was decided we'd do a date night Saturday evening, and have Alex sleep over with Todd's folks. Initially we were going to get dressed up, go out for dinner and then have a night on the town. We took a nap Saturday afternoon to prepare for this, but after waking up and lying there, we realized we had absolutely no desire to go drop $100+ on over-salted, calorie-rich restaurant fare and then pay for costly drinks we could just make at home with the stuff we already had.

So we decided we'd have a date night... in!  And boy, did we ever. For $50 we got fresh flowers (um they are totally mandatory on date night), champagne, shrimp for an appetizer, 2.5lbs crab legs, some corn on the cob and a Caesar salad kit, amazing Tucsan style bread, and some hoppy beer for Todd.

Before our feast, we took some cocktails and grabbed Patton for an evening stroll around the neighborhood, enjoying each other's company as well as some one on one time with the poor dog. Then we came home, quickly boiled and devoured our shrimp cocktail, washing it down with icy champagne, and got to work on our dinner.

It was quick, easy, and left the kitchen in relative cleanliness. We ate outside, enjoying the balmy night and some great salsa music, and talked the night away. We did a little dancing, too. It was so wonderful just focusing on each other, and spending some much-needed and much-loved time together. We weren't dealing with traffic, rude waiters, long lines in bars, loud people and louder music, and we didn't blow a huge amount of money.

Instead, we had a kick ass date night, and to top it all off, we slept in until 11am on Sunday. As Todd said "when date night starts with a nap and ends with 11 hours of sleep, you know you must be tired." It was a roaring success and I can't wait to repeat it next month.




And yes, I totally said coon's age up there