12 Dates of 2014: April

A quick note: One date a month seriously feels like A LOT of work when you have to find a babysitter. I know we have tons of friends who are willing and happy to watch Dane for us when we want to go out, but the problem is actually leaving Dane at their house and crossing our fingers that he will be nice. He's been very attached to us lately and doesn't like either of us leaving, even if the other is staying with him. Last night we tried to put him down to sleep at a friends' house and he screamed and screamed and screamed like he was being abandoned somewhere totally scary, so we ended up just letting him stay up with us and he didn't go to sleep until we got home at 10:00. It stresses me out, honestly, thinking of leaving him somewhere and wondering if he's crying and making life hard for the people watching him. But I'm always glad when we do end up getting out in the end. . . . It's just a lot of work to actually get out there! And I really feel like it's a good habit to keep up. It's only going to get more and more complicated and difficult to go on dates as time goes on, but obviously we want to keep doing it, so might as well start now. I think this goal of "12 dates per year" or once a month might become a permanent thing, as long as we can continue to plan it out.

But anyways, for this month, we ended up having dinner at the Angus Barn. Tommy has talked about going to the Angus Barn in Raleigh for a while. It's a kind of upscale steakhouse in the area, which I've heard a bit about while living here but never really thought we'd actually make it to. But this weekend, we decided that we'd have a graduation celebratory dinner there with Devin and Cathy, as a last hurrah fancy dinner together before we move to different states (boo hoo). We decided we'd use part of Tommy's signing bonus to pay for this fancy date (because we are usually more of a $10 a plate kind of people). When we pulled up, I was absolutely blown away by how huge the building and the parking lot were. I was kind of picturing a normal-sized chain restaurant, but it was actually this huge, sprawling, giant red barn basically just surrounded by forest and a beautiful lake (and the freeway and airport right next to it, of course). It was really awesome. 

We got there early (a miracle!), so we walked around the parking lot and saw some of the lake and the "Kicking Booth" (a nineteenth century North Carolina invention, if I remember correctly). And then we went inside and enjoyed a delicious, fancy steak dinner that we were 100% pleased with. The food was amazing, the company was amazing, the place itself was amazing. And the dessert was amazing--we got their chocolate chess pie, which was apparently rated "in the top 10 best chocolate desserts in the country" (according to our waitress), and we loved it. All in all, we had a great time. 

Happy graduation to Tommy and Devin, part 1! (Pretty sure they're going to get a lot of graduation dinners and experiences in the next few weeks.) And thank you, Angus Barn, for a wonderful evening out.

12 Dates of 2014: March

For our March date, we used a groupon that Tommy bought to go to the Raleighwood Cinema, which is one of those movie theaters where you get to order dinner and it's brought to you at your table while you watch a movie. (I guess I misspoke there--we TRIED to use a groupon that Tommy had bought for this place, but we were unsuccessful. It had expired the DAY BEFORE we went to use it, and we thought they'd still let us at least use the value we had paid count towards buying our tickets, but they said we'd have to call their office during normal business hours and get a coupon mailed to us. Grrr. BUT anyways...) I remember very clearly going to a dinner movie theater in Panama with Denice and sitting in these huge comfy armchairs and having the waiters bring us our delicious meal while we watched our movie, and it all cost about $6 and it was awesome. This place was slightly LESS awesome--because it cost more and the chairs were definitely not cozy La-Z-Boys for us to relax in. But it was still a fun experience to have. We watched the second Hunger Games movie (which we'd already seen) and enjoyed a big ol' pizza all to ourselves. 

And we took a few pictures (but of course, since we were watching a movie, not that many):

The other notable thing about this date is that it was the first time we'd ever paid a babysitter to come to our house while we were gone, instead of swapping with friends or dropping Dane off at their house to sleep there. We asked one of the young women in our ward to come over, and Dane went to bed before she even got there, so it worked out really well. It did make the date more expensive, but it was so nice to not have to pick Dane up from a friend's house and wake him up to bring him home! Maybe once Tommy's job starts (and we have an actual income) we'll do that all the time, haha.

12 dates of 2014: February

For our February date, we did a cooking class at Sur la Table! This was my Christmas present to Tommy. I kind of had no idea what to give him, so I was looking for fun date ideas instead of gifts (because gifts usually end up being less exciting), and I stumbled across the cooking classes they offer. They are way too expensive for us to do regularly but I figured for a special Christmas/Valentine's Day present it would work. Especially because I found this class that was being offered--a pizza-making class! It's a class basically made for us, because we love making pizza and trying different dough recipes and we never feel like we're doing it the best we can. So this was an awesome idea for us to try and learn some new tips.

Basically, one thing I learned was that buying the nice cheese DOES make a difference. We never do, but when we had this margherita pizza with the fresh mozzarella--my socks were knocked off. It might be worth a splurge now and again.

Yes, we were those dorky people who kept pulling out their camera for pictures (we don't even have iphones so it was a REAL camera, no less), but I figured that this was our Christmas present and we needed to have documentation of it.

We learned some dough-rolling techniques (which I think will be the most helpful of the class!) and Tommy was the clear master at it. His was a perfect circle. We were all amazed.

The class was really fun. We ended up making three different pizzas, including the dough, and got to eat them all afterwards. It was awesome cooking with all of the stuff already measured out for us in little nice bowls, and with nice fairies who came around after you to clean up! And it kind of involved a lot of marketing ploys with not-so-hidden attempts to sell us stuff from their store, but we are immune to that sort of thing and got out fast. (Although I am kind of thinking about a pizza stone now--maybe once we move we can invest in something like that. We know we make it enough now to make something like that worth it.) And then we snuck over to the movie theater just a few feet away and saw Monuments Men afterwards--and really enjoyed that too. (Using the free tickets we got for completing our family health challenge--thanks Mom and Dad!) All in all, a successful date.

12 dates of 2014: January

We're getting all crazy and out of chronological order here, but I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. For Christmas this year, Tommy and I basically had the same idea for each other's presents--we both got ideas for dates that we could do and planned them out for each other. Tommy went above and beyond, though, and promised to plan one real, fun, organized date per month for this year. (This makes it sound like we never go on dates, and that's not true, but the number of dates we go on has been severely cut back since having Dane. Now, most of the time we end up just watching movies or playing games together, but it's still fun to get out when we can.)

So, for our January date, we got all into the Olympic spirit and went ice skating. We headed into Raleigh and ate dinner at this delicious Lebanese restaurant called Sitti--we had the most amazing homemade pita bread and these mind-blowing sweet potato dumplings. And then Tommy found out about this outdoor ice skating rink that was set up in downtown Raleigh for a few months of winter, which was really fun (I'm not sure if I've ever ice skated outside before). The rink was hilariously tiny and had tons of cracks and grooves in the ice, but neither of us are very good (although Tommy is much better than I am) so we didn't need very much. I was proud that I didn't fall--that's all I can say for myself. Going ice skating just before the Olympics is a good reminder of how ridiculously amazing those Olympian ice skaters are.

And then this couple got engaged while we were skating, and it was pretty hilariously awkward for the rest of us watching.

So there we go! There was date #1 for the year--and now that I've written about the first one we'd better be sure to actually do the rest.