Good Weekends Rock!

I must say, Joy and I have never been the best at having a routine. It seems like we're always running around somewhere for something. I'm not entirely sure how this came to be, but we've been spending time in the recent months to make some changes and adjustments in our life. In some ways it is hard to believe that 10, almost 11 years have gone by since we were married. A lot has changed in our lives and it seems that this was the appropriate time for a reality check. Where are we now? Where did we think we would be? Where are we going from here? Yada, yada, yada... Two of the areas that we wanted to improve were to set a routine as best we can, and and spend more time together alone as a couple.

We're still working on the routine. It seems like as soon as we get into a routine that is working really well, something comes up that kind of sets us off the routine for a while. They are not necessarily bad interruptions, just interruptions that take us off of the routine. A vacation would be one example of an interruption. It appears that it takes about 1.5 to 2 weeks or so to re-group. It's important for many reasons, among them are financial reasons. It seems that when we don't have a routine, we eat out a lot more and spend money we don't really need to spend. Then we get to bed late, and, well I'm sure I don't have to explain this too much. So we're working on it.

Part of setting the routine is setting aside time for date nights. I've got to say, we're doing a pretty good job of this and we're LOVING IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We go out each (OK, well, most) Tuesday evenings. Every other Tuesday we visit what has become one of our favorite restaurants, The Melting Pot. It's a restaurant that specialized in fondue. Actually, everything is fondue. At first I was concerned that my manhood would suffer from eating at a fondue place. As it turns out, my manhood is just fine, and I might just sacrifice it to eat there anyways! It CAN be a bit pricey if you go for the whole meal. I would suggest that you don't do that. Go for a cheese appetizer (we recommend the cheddar) and a dessert. You'll have MORE than enough food to fill you up, and it will cost you around $30 or so, depending on what you drink. We only got the big meal once (I think it's called The Big Night Out), and didn't really like it. I think we've decided that God made fondue pots for cheese and chocolate, and that meat stuff doesn't work too well. We've actually developed a kind of relationship with the restaurant and they've told us to ask them for a special dish next time we're there...which is tomorrow! Woo-hoo!!!!!

Another way we're doing this is by swapping date-nights with my brother Jeremy and his wife Meghan. We baby-sit their kids every two weeks while they go on a date, and they baby-sit ours every two weeks while we go out. It's been working out really well so far. I will say that I was a bit intimidated watching 5 kids at once. Joy enjoyed just watching me look stressed out. It doesn't happen much. Meghan says Jeremy is the same way. Hey, contagious crying isn't fun.

This weekend was our date night weekend. Joy likes to get coupons from a site called restaurant.com. If you'd like to visit that site, think really hard about where you might find the site. I highly recommend it. They have some pretty good deals. Our coupon this week was "Buy two entrees, Get $25 off." Others are something like "Spend $35, get $25 off." So you could, technically eat for $10. They're good deals. Check it out. We went to the North End of Boston. It was a BEAUTIFUL night. We drove around the North End for a few minutes while we located the restaurant and were unable to find parking on the street. Not that we expected to be able to. So we parked in the State Street garage for $13 and walked over to the restaurant. It wasn't too far.

I couldn't believe how packed the North End was. I mean it's always busy, but it was really busy last night. I was amazed. It looked like everyone was just out having a good time, which is how I believe God meant for it to be- enjoying life with those you love. After we ate our meal at a restaurant called Davide, Joy just had to visit Mike's Pastry shop. Not that I minded. I got some chocolate chip Gelato and Joy got her Canolli and two chocolate dipped strawberries. Mmmm. I saw something there that I hadn't seen before. There were these two guys walking around playing the accordion and violin. It was pretty cool and reminded me of our trip to France when we saw somebody doing the same thing there. I emptied all of the change out of my pocket, about $1.50, and gave it to them. Then, across the street I heard what I thought was an Opera CD. Nope, it was a guy singing opera music. I have to say, he was pretty good. I hadn't seen that before either! I've seen a lot of street performers in Boston, but these two were new to me.

We headed back to the car and had to cross the new Rose Kennedy Greenway. This is the new park where the old highway used to be. It's absolutely beautiful! We stopped to talk for a little while and I snapped a couple of pictures with my cell phone. Sorry about the quality. But the night was unbelievable. If and when we move away from Boston, we're going to miss the city. But we're still here right now!

Finally, we had a pretty busy Sunday too. We went to church as always and then headed back to Quincy for a birthday party for one of Josh's friends. We left there at about 3:30 and headed to New Hampshire to spend time at my parents house to spend time with my family while the Patriots, led by Matt Cassel, beat the J-E-T-S, JETS, JETS, JETS...again. Same story different year. While we were there, Jordan got to spend some real quality time with her Great-Grandpa Scott. It was precious and I think they both enjoyed it equally. We were home by 9PM. I grabbed about 2 hours of sleep and went off to work.

We had a great weekend, and our routine starts tomorrow! I'll be making tacos for dinner!!! Mmmm....!