MELLOW DATE

A friend wrote to me a few weeks back and said she wanted to take the little Ws for an evening, so we dropped them off for a movie and pizza last night. We didn't want to spend a lot of time driving, didn't have money to blow, and I was pretty tired from getting up at 5:00 that morning. So, we opted for a low-key evening and headed out.

Our first stop was the outlets for some Jamba Juice. We'd been given a gift card a couple years ago and had spent part of it on the kids, but there was still enough money on it for each of us to get a smoothie. We just sat and shot the breeze for a while, chatted with a student who recognized Tim and raved about how great of a sub he is, then meandered through the outlets.

Our next stop was The Children's Place. Someone had given us a gift card they didn't need and I wanted to look for a couple of things. We ended up finding a plain fleece for Teebs, which was exactly what I wanted.

Finished at the outlets, we decided to run a few errands - a quick deposit at the bank and a few groceries at a store than I don't like, but have decided to give a second chance because some friends love it. We swung by Goodwill to see if there was anything particularly entertaining there. There wasn't, but we ran into someone from church and chatted briefly before heading out.

We didn't have anywhere else to go and weren't bounding with energy, but we weren't ready to pick up the kids yet. We decided to head back home, left all electronics off, scarfed a bowl of popcorn, and played Phase 10 while we chatted and I yawned.

I was beyond exhausted by 9:30 and we'd had three hours of kid-free time, so we picked up the kids and called it a night.