Date Weekend!

Last weekend, my parents graciously took the girls to their home for the whole weekend! Alex and I had such a great weekend, and by the time everyone came home on Sunday afternoon, we had just started to really miss the girls. :-) Perfect timing!

Friday night we went to Family Friday at Benannie's where we were able to hold real adult conversations and not be interrupted eating our meal. We stayed until almost 10 pm - well after the families with kiddos left (well after we usually leave!) and really enjoyed talking and laughing with our friends.

Saturday morning we walked to the Noah's Bagels in Hillsdale for breakfast then came home to start working on a few of our new Engaged Encounter talks. There is a new outline that everyone will be presenting with starting in 2012, so we need to get cracking on re-writing and first time writing to prepare. This was really insightful, as we were able to use the talks to stem good conversations about our childhoods and how our family backgrounds affected us and our marriage. We took a two hour walk in the afternoon as a breather, and even got a little household chores in before heading out for dinner that night. We picked up Ben and Jerry's to go and watched a movie at home before turning in for the night way too late!

Sunday we slept "in" (Alex until 7:30 and me until 8:45!), putzed around the house in the morning then hit the 11 am Mass at St Mary's Cathedral. It was so nice to see our old Choir friends and catch up with them after the service, and also to be able to worship without worrying about the kids - so peaceful!

That afternoon we stumbled across the Hillsdale "Spring Days" where we got free yummy salad and soup samples at the Farmer's Market and went wine tasting (Alex tasted the wine while I made do with the bread and cheese). Then we worked on our talks a bit more then did some more chores around the house until my folks brought the girls home. We all enjoyed mac and cheese for dinner along with lovely sauteed brussel sprout rapini from the market, then were thrilled to hear the news about Osama bin Laden's death. We all went to sleep well rested and feeling safer about the world that night, though I did have a conversation with Alex about how God really has his work cut out for him delivering justice to that poor soul. Strange that I thought of it that way, but in some ways I wish that Osama is able to understand that torture and killing an entire culture and people cannot possibly be what God or Allah intends for this world. I guess it's up to God now, and I have faith that He'll take care of it once and for all.

Here is a pic of Alex and me at dinner on Saturday night - we went to Element on SW 11th - we were some of the only people there at 7 pm, but enjoyed a great happy hour food menu and paid with our first ever purchased Groupon - $25 worth of food for $12, and I used a $10 off gift from Groupon that they give you when you first sign up. So our $52 meal really cost us just $27! Good deal!

From Blog All Five