Spunky Stories and Monkey Tales: Mama put your high heels on we're goin' to town!

Since moving to Kansas where I have no family and don't really know anyone I'd feel comfortable asking to babysit my kids... date nights are few and far between. I mean I'd leave Kate with plenty of people. She's pretty independent and would probably love to do hair and makeup with some college girl. But Aidan... dear Aidan. He's a different story. I think he'd be fine. But would I? He is in the stranger/separation anxiety stage and I don't know how he'd do. But none of that really matters since I'm not overly concerned enough to do the legwork and find someone suitable and give it a try. I hear you have to pay people to watch your children when you're not related. Hmph.

So Valentine's day was coming up and we were planning a little trip down to Oklahoma because I still after more then 2 years refuse to let go of 2 very important Oklahoma connections: my cell phone number and my hairdresser. My parent's had graciously offered been volunteered to take our little cherubs for the night so Mama and Dada could have a date. Yes a real date. Like where I get to wear a dress, heels, AND panty hose.

Before kids and when Kate was little I pooh-poohed (how does one spell that?) Valentine's Day. I thought it was ridiculously commercialized and stupid. A waste of money, a day designed to make you feel bad for a whole year of not being "loving" enough to your significant other. We resigned to put on pajamas and cook breakfast for dinner. It was our anti-Valentine's day tradition. Of course if my husband didn't show up that day with flowers or some trinket you could forget about breakfast for dinner. You see I was a woman who pretended not to like Valentine's day because of all the reasons people don't like it yet I secretly wanted my husband to swoop in and do all the traditional things one does for their lady love to surprise me or somehow change my mind about this wretched day. We women are ridiculous aren't we?

Anyway... this little tradition worked for a while. But after 2 kids, a move, and very little alone time, I decided that tradition was nearly as dumb an idea as Valentine's day itself. So we decided to take advantage of it being the weekend of love and having someone to watch our kiddos and we took to the big town of Oklahoma City. Of course we didn't have reservations anywhere. We tried to get a reservation for Saturday night on the Thursday before and the people on the phone should have just laughed and then hung up.

But by the "miracle" of Valentine's day some other couple decided that the pressure was just too enormous and canceled their reservation at this little gem at the prime eating time of 6:30 on the Saturday night of Valentine's weekend and as fate would have it I just wondered onto their online reservation website at just the right moment and snagged it up. I headed over to my hairdresser, got my hair cut, colored, and styled up, fretted over what color of panty hose to buy, got dressed, and headed out.

Yes it was expensive. But Oh was it worth it. You see I'm not a big steak fan. If I'm eating a steak it's gotta have some sort of sauce on top to cover up what I've been told is just a bad steak. But this place knows how to do a steak. I gave it the highest compliment by saying it was perfect just the way they cooked it. Salt, pepper, and butter. Nothing more, nothing less. Tasty, tasty. After dinner we did what every couple does after a fancy dinner and headed over to the mall.

Enjoy some pictures of us before our delightful Valentine's date. I wasn't even being sarcastic that time!

He got me flowers! I didn't even have to prompt him! Except for that tiny little conversation the week before when I might have mentioned that women should receive flowers at the VERY least on the following occasions: Birthday, Anniversary, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and whenever they push or have a baby cut out of them. I might have been kidding just a little.