Just the Two of Us

  This Christmas was good to us. I mean, this Christmas our families were so good and generous to us. My favorite gifts that we received this year were opportunities for experiences that we probably wouldn't have gotten for ourselves. Season passes to Silver Dollar City, babysitting coupons, gift cards to restaurants ... these are a few of my favorite things.

  Anyway, this year my parents gifted us a night away at a hotel & a couple's massage, as well as childcare for our mini stay-cation. We took advantage of their generosity last night - sort of an early Valentine's get-away - and ... It. Was. Glorious.

  I'm always writing about the kiddos, so I thought it would be nice to document the fact that we did something that didn't involve Veggie Tales, diapers, pacifiers, and Hot Wheels. Yesterday afternoon my mom cam over after we got the little ones down for their naps, and then we took off. Freedom! Well, first we went and signed a dozens of papers since we are refinancing our house (yay!), and ... freedom! We picked up lunch and checked into our suite. It was quiet. It had cable. We ate, watched pointless television, read, and then napped at 5pm. Because we could.

  After our evening naps we got ready for dinner at Eleven, the restaurant at Crystal Bridges museum. We've been wanting to try it out for a while, and we were not disappointed. I ordered the Arctic Char and it was seriously one of the best things I have ever put in my mouth. I told Josh I would eat the dish everyday if I could, and if we hadn't been in public I probably would have licked my plate. Instead, I settled for scraping every last teensy piece of quinoa off of my plate and using the side of my fork to scoop up the remnants of the pomegranate balsamic reduction. So, you should eat there sometime.

  After dinner we ran by Wal-Mart to pick up some snacks, then went back to the hotel for more R&R. I was a little bummed that I had a really difficult time falling asleep ... apparently I now need the noise of the kids' sound machines coming through their monitors to purr me to sleep. When I finally turned on the sound machine app on my phone I was out like a light. Until 10:30am. That was amazing. Sadly, I woke up to discover I had a voicemail from the spa telling me one of the massage therapists came down with the flu, so we'll have to get our massages another time. The theme of relaxation continued until we checked out at lunchtime and decided to try out Pho Thanh, a Vietnamese restaurant in Bentonville. It was ridiculously good. The prices were very reasonable, we got WAY more food than we expected, and the waitress was so sweet and helpful. The eggrolls were delicious, and if you go I would recommend ordering the bun thit nuong cha gio, or "B2" (this was my first experience with Vietnamese food and it made me feel like less of a rookie to type the full name).

    A quick Target trip after lunch yielded a super cute pair of mint skinny jeans for me ... they actually aren't cute on at all right now, but I need motivation to make myself start working out, so I bought a size too small in hopes that they'll fit sometime in the 90 day return period :) We then arrived home to find a clean house with my massive pile of ironing done (thanks mom!) and sleeping babies. Cora woke a few minutes later and spent about 45 minutes just snuggling me: cooing, playing with my hair, flirting with her daddy, and sweetly flopping her head over on me. She's a heart-melter, that one.

Ahhh. It's good to be home.