Date Night!

All week Grady and I have been looking forward to this evening. We were kind of like a couple of high schoolers - giddy for a date. Grady and I are busy all the time, but rarely have time for just the two of us to spend several hours alone without interruption. Saturday arrived and 4:30 pm could not come fast enough.

One of our amazing college girls, Heather, came to watch the boys. Here's the important detail though: she insisted ahead of time that we let her watch our boys for free. We went back and forth "arguing" with her and finally agreed that this once she could come over and we wouldn't pay her.

Heather arrived, driving her green bug, and my boys were ecstatic when she let them ride in her "green frog car" as Grady Lee called it. The boys jumped in the back seat and took a s-l-o-w spin around the culdesac.

As Grady and I were heading out the door for the night, Heather handed me a card and said I "had to open it and read it on the way to dinner."

Uumm, sweet Heather wrote some wonderfully kind words and included a Visa gift card for us with strict instructions that we "were to have the best night ever and not worry about paying for anything." Seriously?! For real?! How many college students think to do something like that? Good grief, I'm not sure I even offered to babysit for free when I was in college, let alone pay for someone else to have a date night! I was, and still am, humbled by her generosity and thoughtfulness.

Grady and I enjoyed a great dinner - steak, shrimp, calamari, halibut, and baked mac & cheese. YUM is an understatement. It was delicious!

After dinner we headed for a movie and chose Toy Story 3. I'm pretty sure we were the only adults in the theater without kids watching it too, but it didn't matter. The movie was great and we enjoyed it. (And also decided our boys have a long way to go before they can handle a movie like that.)

The night was still young when the movie ended, and, after all, we had a free babysitter, so we opted for some ice cream by the fountain. Usually we're busy keeping kids from getting too wet, or handing them pennies to throw, or cleaning up melted ice cream that has drenched their shirts. But not this time. Nope, it was just us sitting on a bench talking and laughing. And it was amazing.

Thanks Heather, from the bottom of our hearts, for watching our boys and for your generous gift to us. You are a gem inside and out!