Date Night

On Friday night we dropped the kids off at Jed’s cousin Darren’s house so Jed and I could go out on a date. Darren and his fantastic wife Melissa have two kids, Dakin (age 3) and Kasch (age 1). They live about 15 minutes from us in a neighboring town. We have truly loved getting to know them better and it is wonderful to have family close by. Melissa is our emergency backup if we can’t pick Jared up from school and I am her backup if she can’t get Dakin from his school. Jared talks all the time about his “new cousins” and all four kids get along very well. We have decided to do a babysitting swap so both couples get a chance to get out once in a while without the kids. Now back to date night. . .

Jed found us a lovely Italian restaurant in downtown Austin called Carmelo’s. The restaurant is in a beautiful old building that was built in 1872 as a “railroad house” to accommodate passengers traveling on railroads or one of the four stagecoach lines Austin had then. It was romantic and the food was delicious. Jed and I skipped talking about his work and my work (the kids) and talked about our future plans and dreams. It was a perfect dinner.

After dinner we really wanted to walk around the downtown area but the weather had other ideas. Wind, rain and lightening caused us to hop back in our car and take a leisurely drive through the area instead. Austin’s downtown area has numbered, one-way streets and we drove down the famous 6th street. Just about every establishment on 6th is a bar, club or hip restaurant. Remember, Austin is a big college town. It seemed the students weren’t going to let the weather ruin their Friday night and their was a definite Mardi Gras feel as we passed people walking down the street carrying their beers from one bar to another.

When we picked up the kids they were both happy to see us and yet sad to leave Darren and Melissa’s house. Nothing could have been a better ending to our date then to take our sleepy, pajama-clad kiddos home and know that their night had been as much fun as ours.