Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Kidless for 24 Hours

Matt's mom and dad took all five of our kids overnight on Saturday night so that Matt and I could have one night alone before the baby comes. We had hoped to get out of town, but realized our time and budget was short, so we opted to stay here.

Matt took me to our "special occasion" restaurant. I ordered the chicken marsala. Matt asked the waitress if the chef could concoct something not on the menu, giving the chef free reign to "surprise" him. The waitress laughed, "We've never had anyone order THAT before. Let me go see if he'll do it." Sure enough, the chef was up to the challenge. Matt's dinner salad arrived with Walla Walla sweet onions and fresh plumbs with a port wine dressing. His entree was a nice piece of sturgeon with a fresh peach sauce. I thought Matt wouldn't like it, but he said it was one of the best fish dishes he's ever had. "Be sure to give my compliments to the chef," he said when the waitress returned for our plates. They even gave him three dollars off the normal price of sturgeon. Leave it to Matt to be the only person in town to ask a restaurant that's been in business for four years to "surprise" him.

We then headed to Lowes. Matt needed a few things and I got a chance to just look without being rushed. Usually we're trying to get home to some pressing project and the kids, but this time I was able to look through all the clearance curtains and the plants and pots. I did get a couple of nice pots for 75% off and a palm plant for the dining room. Surprisingly, Matt agreed to let me get the palm plant even though he has visions of keeping the dining room completely empty to accommodate a 9 1/2 foot table when we find one used someday. I convinced him that the plant could easily be moved to make room for guests. Ahh, the give and take of marriage.

We headed home and Matt installed the reverse osmosis system (finally!) in the sink. Now we'll have easy access to water we can use for cooking which will be much easier than running to Walmart to refill water jugs all the time. We stayed up past our normal bedtime to watch the Olympics.

Sunday morning we woke up late. Our usual alarm clocks (screaming, jumping, running kids) were not here to wake us. We showered in a hurry to get to our friend P.K.'s church. Her first grandchild, a boy, was baptized Sunday. It was nice to see so many familiar faces that we haven't seen for so long.

As we ate our lunch we finished talking about all the subjects we had hoped to cover while we had the luxury of not being interrupted by little ones. We were able to plan for the home school year, Grace's 13th birthday party and the baby's baptism.

We had a nice visit with Matt's Nana in the afternoon and then headed to Matt's mom and dad's house to pick up the kids. They had just gotten out of the wading pool and were disappointed that we came so early to pick them up, but they were still happy to see us. We were happy to see them, too. We miss them terribly when they're not with us.

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