Date night!

     Tim and I were very fortunate to be able to go on a date this past weekend. We have only been on maybe two and a half dates since Owen was born. The first was in April during the week after Owen was born. My parents were in town and they offered to babysit him while we went to see a movie. We figured it would be nice for them to get some one-on-one time with Owen and also that we should take them up on the offer since we didn't have a babysitter or family nearby to do it once they left. It was actually a pretty horrible date because we spent the whole movie looking at each other, both willing the movie to end early so we could go home to our baby. We went on a semi-date in June when we went home to visit our families. Really, we left Owen at Tim's parents house while we went to Chick-Fil-A to pick up some banana pudding milkshakes for the family. But for parents of a two-and-a-half-month-old, 15 minutes in a car alone together is a date! Haha! When we went to the beach with my parents, we went to see the latest Harry Potter movie and that was really fun. 
     This past weekend, I finally decided to take my friend Amanda up on her offer to babysit for us. It's hard when you're far from family and you don't feel like you know anyone well enough to leave your only child with them. But we've known Amanda and her husband Jim now for almost a year and they are expecting their first baby in May or June, so we figured we would let them practice on Owen for a few hours. 

Here we are all dressed up for our date! And yes, Momma is wearing some eyeliner!

     To begin our date, we made a trip to Target before our dinner reservation for some baby wipes. We may have gone on a date, but we didn't stop being parents. We also picked up a little something for our sweet boy. 

It's a onesie with a picture of milk and cookies on it that says, "For Santa, not Daddy."

     After our quick Target trip, we went out to dinner at the Tri-Cities' newest and arguably most popular restaurant right now, Texas Roadhouse. If you don't call ahead for a spot, the wait is generally more than an hour. Dinner was great because we were able to talk and laugh and enjoy one-on-one time with one another. We had a baby onion blossom for our appetizer, though we were only able to eat about an eighth of it. For dinner, I had a small steak with a baked potato and salad and Tim had pulled pork, ribs, mashed potatoes, and steamed carrots and broccoli. What was really funny about dinner though, was that we were for some reason seated in the baby section. There were no fewer than six babies in the tables directly around us that night and they kind-of made us miss our boy.

      After dinner we drove down to the Columbia River to park and wait for the Lighted Boat Parade. It was really interesting. The boats start at Clover Island in Kennewick and sail down the river to Howard Amon Park in Richland and then return to Clover Island. There were at least 12 boats in the parade. My favorite was one decorated to look like Santa was surfing.

Here's a photo from online that shows one of the boats.

These are our photos. Here they come!

     The boat parade ended close to nine so we headed home to see whether Amanda and Jim were successful in getting Owen to bed. We were not too surprised when we walked in to find them still playing on the living room floor. What was the best part was seeing Owen's face when he first glimpsed me coming in the room. Generally I get to see Owen make that face when Tim comes home from work, but it's rarely directed at me. It was just so sweet to see his face light up when he saw Mommy and Daddy come home. After Jim and Amanda left, I got Owen to sleep and we ended our night with Tim playing some Modern Warfare 3 while I read and went to bed early.