We Own That

Tim and I celebrated Valentine's Day on the 15th, because that's how we roll.  And yeah, we owned Saturday night.  We were kid-free and tearing up the town.  We were unstoppable.  We were, well honestly, we were kind of lame.  But I think that's also sort of how we roll.

After Tim dropped the kids off at his parents for a sleepover, he and I were overwhelmed by our freedom.  "You mean we can go anywhere we want to go for dinner?  No dietary restrictions, no children's menu..."

So many choices.  Even though we were limited by budget, I still felt like all those times years ago when I walked around Blockbuster going through the aisles of hundreds of movies and not being able to commit to one movie I wanted to watch.  And then we tried to figure out what to do after dinner, more choices.

I suggested museums, artsy movie theaters and finding a speaker talking somewhere about something thought-provoking or oooh, maybe controversial.  "I want to think," I told Tim.  "I want to have something to talk about other than kids and parenting and scheduling."

Instead of thinking, I was over-thinking my way to ruining my night, our night.  So we took a step back and we thoughtfully decided that thinking is overrated.  We thoughtfully decided that thinking on date nights might just be for people with no kids or people with grown up kids.  We thoughtfully discussed how smart and interesting we were before we had kids.  And then we thoughtfully decided that date nights for a couple of almost 40-year-old, exhausted parents with a gaggle of energetic children like us means eating at a diner and going to a movie.  

THE diner wher we spent our date night.

Getting wild and crazy for us right now means extra movie theater candy just because we can dammit.  

It was kind of perfect.  We talked about our kids a little over cheeseburgers and milkshakes at the diner.  We held hands in the movie theater.  And then we got home around 10 and reveled in the fact that we didn't have to pay a babysitter.  

And then we spent the rest of the weekend with our gaggle of energetic children, loving and appreciating our exhausting life. Four kids, lame but sweet date nights, lots of love...we totally own that.

Lucy is learning this Celine Dion "classic" on the piano and we sing it everyday.
Yeah, it's kind of like our family love song right now.