Point of view- Tonight: Slapped together stir-fry. Boys eating dinner shirtless. Watermelon rinds and sippy cups and rice flying around the room. Dinner detritus smeared into toddler hair. Flooded bathroom and wet mom pants following an extra expressive bath time. In-depth analysis of how a wipes container opens. Snuggly stories and masterful bedtime dilly-dallying. FatJ watching Tour de France with a beer. Me taking care of random internet business with a coke + lemon.

When we joined up on the couch, he said “our weekend away seems like it was eons ago.” I said, “it feels like our weekend away never happened.”

Point of view- one week ago: Adults-only road trip north. Gorgeous summer day in Duluth, replete with lake walk strolling, smokehaus lunching, malt eating, and cocktail sipping. Peace and quietude in a mansion. Scenic drive to dinner, followed by dining at it’s loveliest in celebration of 11 wonderful years together.

[There was one similarity between tonight and one week ago, however... tonight's flood was the result of mischievous bathing boys. The flood of one week ago was the result of a poorly-planned dip in a jacuzzi tub. Apparently losers like myself with 'normal' bathtubs don't realize the right time to turn on the jets in a fancy tub. I had water spraying all over our accommodations, and then had to use all of our towels to sop it up. The romance screams loudly, people!]

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Two and a half days was plenty of time to pack in some other adventures of the we-never-get-to-do-this-anymore variety…

-Lunch at Fitger’s Brewhouse (beer sampler for FatJ!)
-Random shopping/wandering
-MOVIE (Midnight in Paris) (at a theater that sells beer- bonus for FatJ as he watched the Woody Allen film. Anyone sensing a theme here?!)
-happy hour champagne
-concert at Bayfront (Cloud Cult and Michael Franti/Spearhead)
-more beer
-pizza
-sleeping in until 8:00am
-picnic on the way home

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We didn’t get much in the way of photos of the two of us…

self-timer shot before dinner

and then the famous ‘ask the guy at the next table to take your picture’ shot (there was no salvaging this one)

and finally, pretending to know how to play chess

Man, that was an awesome weekend.