An August Date Night

   Seventeen years ago, Tim and I were both a part of our school's production of a Midsummer's Night Dream. He was cast as the part of Puck. I was Mustard Seed. Interesting side note: My sister was originally cast as Mustard Seed and then decided that she didn't want to be a part of the play. My parents told her that she had to find someone to take her spot (enter little sister who was too shy to audition). The director (who happened to be my future sister in law) uncharacteristically allowed one of her actors to switch out the role. Eh, it all worked out. The play got me involved with highschool drama and began a friendship with Tim that deepened into marriage.

 

Yep, I was a cross-eyed fairy who had a photo-bombing shrewd and knavish sprite behind her.

When I was looking into date ideas for August, I came across the Portland Actors Ensemble. This year's production was A Midsummer's Night Eve.  I knew that I had found a winner of a date idea!

 

We attended their last evening show (the play does run late into August, but starts at 3 pm. No thank you!).
It was a riot! I love watching community plays partly because of my involvement with highschool drama but mostly of the price of tickets. This one was free! I will admit that this is the first play I've seen in way to many years. The actors did a phenomenal job on the performance. It was so much fun to watch them put their own spin on the play.

 

This next summer, the Ensemble is putting on Hamlet and plan to show it at an old, local cemetery. Yes, it's kind of weird and a bit morbid, but I am looking forward to the production.

June's Date Day

Our continuing monthly date night adventures.

A little over a year ago, I had been trying to figure out what to give Tim for our seventh wedding anniversary. At the time, Tim was looking into purchasing a handgun and all of the necessary equipment (i.e. gun safe because we have curious children and an anxious wife) and training classes. I thought that he would love to have an afternoon of shooting at the local shooting range. However, I was pregnant with Isaac at the time and after talking with the shooting range manager and my obstetrician, I changed my mind and decided to put off the shooting range date until I was not pregnant with Isaac.

 Rabbit trail alert... Did you know that the sound waves from a gun shot could damage a baby's development? Neither did I until I researched it. 

Back to the date...I kept this idea in mind as I planned out the dates for the year and added it to the June date night.

As the date got closer, Tim and I were talking about it and decided that neither of us really wanted to spend about $100 at the shooting range (gun rentals plus bullet and target purchases really add up!). So, we decided to drop the boys off at their grandparents and spent the day working on some projects that we've been putting off. Be still my beating heart! Finishing projects without children interrupting us! How romantic!  I worked on finishing the second Real Hope quilt and making some bibs for my grandparents. 

Tim worked on setting up his Raspberry Pi to make some sort of *mumble mumble* insert computer speak *mumble mumble* way over my head description of what he is doing *mumble mumble*.

Even though I have no clue exactly what he is doing, I am thrilled to have a husband who deals with all of our techie problems.

Although we didn't do our planned date, we did spend time together shooting down our projects on our to do lists. (Eh, eh? How do you like that joke, Dear!)

May Date!

If you have been following my blog for the past few months, you might remember my Valentines gift to Tim.

This month was an interesting date idea (at least to me). While trying to think of different date ideas to do in the Portland/Vancouver area, I stumbled across stacylaughs.com which has a section of her blog devoted to  interesting date ideas in the Portland area. Perfect, right?  Nope! I followed the roulette rules and the number generator came up with the date idea of dinner at a specific restaurant in Portland and walk in a specific park. However, as Tim put it... "Who is Stacy and why should I believe her when it comes to deciding which restaurant we should go to!?!" 

Somebody didn't read rule 4!

We decided to that we would head out to Hillsboro and enjoy our three year old certificate to the Orenco Station Grill (especially since we didn't use it in March like we originally planned).  This time around, all three boys stayed with Grandma and Grandpa!

So over dinner, French pressed coffee, and dessert, we were able to enjoy an interruption free adult conversation that was filled with "would you rather" questions.

We did end up walking around a beautiful neighborhood park near the restaurant, so I guess we did fulfill the stacy laughs date idea even if it was at a different location.

April's Date Day

For Valentines Day this year, I came up with 12 date night/day ideas.

Since April is my birthday month, I decided that we would head to nearby Camas, have lunch, and window shop at the local antique mall.

We ended up going to a small Russian restaurant for lunch. I went with a chicken and asparagus filled crepe. It was pretty good. Tim mocked me for taking a picture of my food.

I retaliated by taking his picture. That's how our relationship rolls.

Isaac was our tag along and was content to hang out in the stroller.

After lunch, we walked down the street to the antique mall and began looking at all of the yesteryear items for sale. Of course, Tim found an antique calculator and began figuring out how it worked.

Isaac also enjoyed the trip or at least whenever I cooed at him.

One item for sale was aptly named, "Cool Baby Buggy".

We had a fun time hanging out together (in spite of Tim's deadpan look on his face. It was literally the best picture of the two of us the entire date. How sad is that!).

May's Date Night: stacylaughs.com Roulette

Date Night

This year for Valentines Day, I scoured Pinterest to find a fun yet gift to give Tim when I came across this pin that had free printable cards. So, I printed them out and planned out some fun dates that we could do in the area. 

I had the year start out in March and planned a dinner at Orenco Station Grill. We were given a Groupon certificate for the restaurant almost 2 years ago and have yet to use it. We did go there for our anniversary 2 years ago, but forgot to take the certificate with us. It's been on our bulletin board ever since.

A couple of Saturdays ago, we packed up Beniah and Elijah and took them over to their grandparents house for a day with Grandma and Grandpa. They were super excited! 

Unfortunately, Isaac and I were feeling sick and I had no desire to drive 45 minutes to dinner, so we stopped off at Safeway for some soup, ciabatta bread, and Catching Fire.

This sick little stinker refused to nap and wanted to be held for a lot of the movie.

He seemed so sorry to interrupt our date.

It wasn't the date that I planned, but it was nice to have a sick day with only one child demanding my attention.