Date Night

On Friday Jared and I went on a "mini-cation" without the girls. They spent the evening with Aunt Amy and then went to sleep over at Nonny's house while Jared and I enjoyed a nice date night downtown. I'm embarrassed to tell you when our last night out together was. (Wait, do we get to count the adult session of Stake Conference? Sweet. Then we've had TWO dates this year!)

Anyway, some thoughts on our date night:

1) Why does movie popcorn smell so darn good? I rarely buy it, because there's something in the butter-flavored liquid topping that makes me queasy. But oh, that smell is intoxicating. Right up there with new crayons, Pink Pearl erasers, and Play-Doh.

2) Peanut butter M&M's are still one of the best candies ever created.
3) The Starburst jelly bean is no slouch, either.
4) Eating a Starburst jelly bean when you're expecting a peanut butter M&M is startlingly disappointing.
5) We saw "Babies", which documents the first year in the life of four babies from around the world. What I learned from the movie: Parenthood presents challenges regardless of culture, but in many regards we American moms have got it pretty easy. I've never had to skin a dog for dinner.

6) Also, I can handle a little innocent nudity when it's part of the culture--say, among the indigenous people of Namibia who always walk around shirtless and, well, don't even OWN shirts. But I'm sorry, if you're an upper-middle-class Caucasian woman in San Francisco you don't have an excuse. I don't care if it's your hot tub.


7) The ambience at Wasatch Pizza may be lacking, but the pizza is sure tasty.
8) Sausage gives me a wicked headache. Next time, this:



9) You know you've arrived when you can afford a room at a hotel with complementary bathrobes.


10) Even at 9 PM, long after the last wurst has been served, Siegfried's will still smell like brats and sauerkraut. . .which is a little disturbing when you're eating chocolate raspberry cake.


11) I wish we had a king-sized bed at home. Compared to our queen bed, it felt kinda like this:



12) There are too many TV channels out there. We watched an intriguing program at 9 AM on the History channel called Alien Engineering. This whole show was based on the premise that UFOs *do* exist and went on to explain just how they were able to travel thousands of light years, fly silently, defeat inertia, etc. The fact that a show like this managed to score air time is proof positive that there must be a vast surplus of programming slots needing to be filled.


13) Question 1: Why are UFOs almost always shaped like saucers, instead of the more traditional rocket shape? Then again, THEY'RE the ones who've accomplished intergalactic space travel, so maybe the real question is:
14) Question 2: Since alien technology is so obviously superior to ours, how come NASA hasn't tried to replicate the flying saucer design?
15) Question 3: Did that theoretical physicist just say "wet smear"? Ew.

16) Absence makes the heart grow fonder, at least until the kids come down from the "high" they've been riding while you were gone and realize their parents are kind of boring. I think by the time they'd been home for two or three hours, they were ready for me to take them back to Nonny's. So was I.

Thanks again to our wonderful babysitters. We really owe you!