Date night!!!

Dennis and I went on a date last night!!!

You may be able to tell from the number of exclamation points that this is not a regular occurence for us. But last night, we made the effort and arranged to have Dennis' mom and sister (who is in from Chicago for the family Christmas celebration today) watch Annalivia, got dressed up, and, after dropping her off, headed to the Quad Cities.
Our plan was to leave by 4, make a couple retail stops, eat some dinner, and head to the Nova Singers Christmas concert at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Davenport. I've sung with Nova Singers occasionally over the last couple of years, and my dad sang with them when I was in junior high and high school, and I have to say that hearing glorious choral music in a beautiful setting generally really sets the Christmas mood for me. So, that was our plan. (And because Dennis is going to the Bears game in Chicago on Sunday and will be gone ALL DAY, this was going to be equitable in the end. Promise.)
Anyway, we ended up leaving about 5 and on the way there, I began to reconsider the cost of going to the concert versus, say, going to a movie together at the posh theater (concert would be about twice as much). And I began to consider the wear and tear on our two gimpy bodies while sitting in the hard wood pews of Trinity Episcopal versus sitting in, say, the comfortable padded seats of said posh movie theater. Needless to say, by the time we got to town, we had decided to go to a movie instead of the concert. We drove by the theater and tried to find a place to eat. We both had wanted steak, but the Texas Roadhouse next to the theater was packed. Then I saw that the Biaggi's about a block away was not busy, so we went there instead. After all, we were all dressed up with no place to go!
At Biaggi's, we sat at a great table in the corner in the back room (and got right in without a reservation) and we had really, really good food -- fried calamari appetizer, chicken parmesan for Dennis (he wussed out on the steak out of fear that it would be a little too froofy as some Italian restaurants are wont to present it), wonderfully rare steak for me, and tiramisu and coffee and chocolate torte for dessert. By the time we got done eating, we had decided that rather than see a movie at the theater, we'd just head home and watch Love Actually on the living room floor. Which we did and it was lovely. Then Dennis went out to pick up a wide-awake Annalivia about 11:15 and she was asleep before he got out of his mom's driveway and stayed asleep til 6:45 this a.m.
So. We had a date!! And it was just such a great date and the kind of thing we haven't had the chance to do since we had Annalivia. It was just wonderful -- good food, good conversation, GREAT company. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
Married friends are always telling me that we need to make date night a priority, and in some ways, I'm sure they're right. In other ways, though, not going on many dates makes these extraordinary experiences truly delicious and ones to savor. We didn't take a moment of that date for granted. After all, it may be two years before we get to the next really great one!!