Date night: Mar 4th

For Family Date night, Steven decided to give me a break from writing my final paper and we went to dinner at a place called Space Aliens...In true ND style, it is a family joint, connected to a bar with an arcade in it. I swear we're not THAT bad of parents...but Quintin really thinks he needs lots of food.

By the way...he only sucked on it. We didn't let him eat it and it had no spices on it.

We also let him try out his first arcade game. Clearly he was really excited about it.

After date night, we went home, got Quintin in bed and I went back to writing my beast of a paper.

Babysitters.

Up until about two weeks ago, we always took Quintin with us on date night (minus the time we were in AZ and he stayed with grandma and grandpa).
Well, we learned the hard way that he is too big for this now.
Feb. 11
First, we went to see a movie (Gnomeo & Juliet-funny!). He was asleep when we got there. Normally, he would stay asleep. Well he decided to wake up SCREAMING. After walking around outside the theater with him for a bit, we went back inside and I stood in the aisle thing and watched half the movie. Then, Steven spilled most of our candy all over the floor too. The rest of the movie, Quintin had this uncanny ability to coo at the screen every time it was supposed to be quiet.

After, we decided to go to dinner. We ordered pizza at the restaurant knowing that it required at least 20 minutes to cook. Well Quintin (who hadn't had a nap all day) decided to let everyone in the restaurant know he was there. This led both Steven & I to take turns going out in the hall and walking around with him. At one point, I was out and the waiter came and told Steven there was a new cook on duty and our pizza had been burned-another 20 mins. (but on a positive note-we did get it for free) After what seemed like a year, Steven finally got Q asleep and the pizza was ready. I cut up Steven's pizza into tiny pieces so he could eat while holding Q. Of course Q woke up right as I was finishing and we had ordered dessert.

We fought him off as long as possible but when we finally left, he screamed the whole way home until I could feed him and knock him out for a good nap.
Morale of the story? Baby Quintin is too big and nosy to go on date night with mom and dad.

All in all, one of those nights we knew for sure that we wouldn't have handled the experience well if we hadn't been married.

Here's a picture from the restaurant. Faces describe everything haha.

Note: It's not that I won't leave Quintin with a babysitter...it's that I can't. He 'forgot' how to drink out of a bottle when we got back from Christmas break. I don't feel comfortable leaving him with someone when I know he'll just scream a good majority of the time. So, we're looking forward to having a good schedule with cereal and then eventually baby food so we can leave him. Until then, it's grandma and grandpa or loud date nights!

Grandma Dorn's Visit

Steven's mom was able to visit us for the weekend at the beginning of the month. It was a great help to have an extra pair of hands. I think she probably got tired of doing all our dishes, but I got a lot of homework done and I really appreciated all her help! While she was here, we also got kind of brave and went out and did stuff. We went to have an early dinner together at Ground Rounds and then we went to the movies and saw Secretariat. Q slept through most of it, and there were only 4 other people in our theater so I fed him in the dark when he woke up. He got to see the last race part too. The next day, Steven took his mom and Q for a walk around campus and I got to stay home and do hw. Then, they came back and we all went to the community carnival our apartments were having. Again, Q slept through most of it...and a lot of it was for older kids. But, we did get Q his first balloon hat and took a funny picture together. The rest of the time Becky was here, we watched stake conference at home, they cooked lots of good food, and we got to catch up on sleep while she snuggled Q. It was sad to see her go! We are looking forward to coming home for Christmas in a few weeks! Here are some pictures of Grandma D's visit!

Our St. Patrick's Day date

So Steven recently believed me that I was Irish (after my mom and dad backed me up). So for our date night the friday before St. Patricks day, he planned a celebration!
We had to run some errands but the activity of the night was sugar cookies with green frosting. And we watched 2 movies in our very own living room (Amelia & Love Happens). It was a fun night and the cookies were delicious. We used a Betty Crocker cookie mix- I will never make sugar cookies from scratch again as long as Betty keeps making the mix!
Here's some pictures...
We ended up making more of the right side's color of frosting for the rest of them...it was less yellow!

Inevitably I smeared frosting all over Steven...and caught it on camera :)Yummy Yummy!!

There was also a parade on our street the next day. I was really not feeling good, but Steven came home from splits and we were supposed to go see it. He told me he had seen the beginning of it and we could probably catch the end...In the time he walked up stairs, I got my shoes on and we got back down the street, the parade was over. He had actually seen the entire parade go by. We walked the length of our street to see the floats at least...there was 1 'float' and the rest was the Shriners & their mini bikes, etc. Mostly, I think it was an excuse for people to come in green and then hit up the bars early in the downtown district. Oh well, it was a good walk :)

Friday Night Date Night

I will admit that when we started blogging this year, we thought we would have lots of adventures to talk about each day. Well, turns out that sometimes it is so cold that all we do is stay inside and study. HOWEVER- we make sure that we go out and do something at least once a week for a date on a Friday night.

3 weeks ago, Steven and I went to a ballet...yes that's right a ballet! Steven was all game for it until he found out there were no words. However, after sitting through it, I think he understood the story and actually enjoyed it (although he would never admit to it!)

The ballet we saw was Coppelia performed by the North Dakota Ballet Company. Turns out they are based out of a theatre just around the corner from us. We got there an hour early to buy tickets at the door. We thought it would be sold out...we forgot where we were. The theatre really isn't too big. You could sit in the back row and still have a good view! But, we got tickets on the 4th row and all was well. The ballet is a comedic ballet. Wikipedia it to learn more. Because it was so close, we just walked and took our umbrella...when we got out it was raining what is called Freezing rain...it's comparable to hail but there's more of it and it comes down harder...anyways. We tried to get a picture...but you could imagine our eagerness to just get home!
Two Fridays ago, we spent date night at Target and then home. We bought Bye, Bye Birdie! a musical that I grew up on. Then we bought some pasta and dessert and came home to eat and enjoy our movie. If you've never seen it, you should expand your horizons!


So, since I got to pick two weeks of date night in a row...Steven picked next. He picked that we go grocery shopping. It was SUPER exciting, let me tell you. But, before we went to the store, we went and picked up Steven a UND jacket. I got it from this lady on freecycle. If you've never heard of it, check out www.freecycle.org Basically, you can join regional groups and people post stuff they want to give away rather than throwing it out...it's all about keeping good stuff out of the land fill. Seriously, go check it out! I bet they have one in your area!

And that is it as far as date night goes...this week, we will see. I entered a contest to win tickets to the Monster Truck show that is coming...but I think technically Steven gets to pick what we do, so we will see what happens!