Last weekend Chris and I had the opportunity to go out for a little while, and enjoy a lovely dinner. We usually choose to celebrate March 1, instead of Valentine's day, which is the anniversary of our first date. We had originally thought that we (I) would find some amazing top notch restaurant and have a really amazing meal, since it's so rare that we go out. We wanted to do an earlier dining time, so we could put the kids down, but in the dining world, anyone that shows up before 7 is pretty much assumed to know squat about food, and treated as such.

Not wanting to be treated in such a way, and having difficulties justifying the money, I turned to restaurant.com. They have a lot of restaurants on there, and you can choose how large a gift certificate you want. Always read the fine print, but most $25 GC require you spend a minimum of $35. So, you would be spending the price of the GC plus the additional $10 or so that you spend at the restaurant. You usually end up saving at least $15. If you go to a nicer restaurant you can save more, and if you sign up for their e-mail sales, you can usually get the GC for less also.

Which is what is going on right now. They are running an 80% off sale on all of their GC. This means $25 GC are now $2. All you have to do is enter the code DINE during the checkout process. These are great for a really nice evening out without the price tag, or just a casual meal out, when you don't want to cook, but also don't want to have to spend much money to eat out. These GC last for a year, and they usually don't do these dramatic of sales very often, so you may want to consider stocking up (b-days, mothers day, anniversaries, etc.).

The sale is only lasting until Sunday, so hurry up!

Here is where we went: http://www.parkcafeduluth.com/

And here is a picture of my favorite dish there, I think next time, I might just order three of these! Fried Green Tomatoes with warm brie, in a bacon balsamic emulsion.

BOY:

We were playing with pipe cleaners, and Josh happened to have a neon pink one in his hands. He messed with it for a little bit, forming his creation, and then proudly told me to "look mommy!" Cool, what is it I asked?

A gun.

In addition to yesterday's great quotes, here is one from this morning:

"Daddy, step away!"

The intonation is what really makes it.

Josh is in the other room playing with the cardboard box my new Wii Fit came in. He keeps saying"oh Billy" (as in Billy Madison quote) and laughing at himself.

That kid cracks me up.

Yesterdays great lines were:

"whatever" with strong emphasis on the last syllable

"for the love" said with great exclamation

The best though, was the other day he was talking to me and asked me:
"Mommy, do you like it when you drive REALLY fast and the drive off the edge and into the water and CRASH and die?" I said a casual no, and he proceeded with an emphatic "well I do".

As a note with that last quote, he has learned to play MarioKart Wii, courtesy of his daddy, and one of is favorite parts of the game is when he drives off the cliffs into the water and crashes.

We have definitely been blessed with humor in our lives courtesy of Josh!

Jack is in the most adorable phase.

In the last couple of weeks he has just been bursting with personality.

As much as there are beginning glimpses of mischief, and screaming at his older brother when he tries to take something from him, it's so much fun to see who he is becoming.

He still seems to be a little more laid back than Josh was, particularly in the area of getting what he wants. But he doesn't seem shy of expressing what it is that he wants either.

You can tell he is just itching to get in on all the fun that daddy and big brother are having, and is known to cheer them on, but he's still content at times to just snuggle in my arms.

If teething isn't taking over, he may quite possible be the most adorable 8 month old around. Even then, he's still adorable, just fussy adorable.

And he just got baby crocs. That just about pushes the cuteness factor over the edge.

Cute Jack moment:

Whenever Jack wakes up and gets out of bed, if Josh isn't already in his room by that point, Jack just stares at the door waiting for him to come in. If Josh does come in he immediately laughs and kicks his legs in excitement. It's so cute to see the admiration for big brother already showing up.

He also has the sounds "mama" and "dada" down, although I'm not quite sure he has quite figured out who to attribute them to. Although it is when he starts fussing that he usually makes the mama sound, and he never makes the dada sound around me, so maybe I'm not giving him as much credit as he deserves.

He also has his two bottom teeth in and is working on his top ones right now.

Other than that we are all well, just going non-stop. We rotate weeks that we lead the small group, and this week was our week, so it feels as though we've had a little more than usual on our plate. Hopefully the weeks that we don't lead will be a little more relaxed.

Hope everyone has a good Valentine's Day. We are doing...nothing! Well, that's not entirely true, we'll have a fun meal here and have chocolate dipped strawberries, but other than that, no plans. Personally I think V-Day is a little bit of a silly holiday. We usually try to go out around March 1, the day we had our first date, and celebrate that, so hopefully within the next week or two we'll go out for a nice meal (that will be better food and not rushed!). Chris did surprise me with two dozen roses delivered though, so that was lovely. I have a great husband!

Enjoy your weekend, hope everyone is having as fabulous weather as we are!