2015 in Review

I know, I know. It's so late into the new year, it's almost pointless to write last year's review. I lost all my cell phone pictures when my phone broke and I had to look through Josh's pictures to capture anything that happened this past year. I think it'll be a little Josh-sided, but we'll make do. Here goes.

So January last year was kind of intense. Josh and I were secretly pregnant and I had just started my master's degree. My sister Heather invited me and my sister Allyse to visit her in Pittsburgh so we all flew out for three weeks of snowstorms and really good pastrami sandwiches. Like, obscenely good. I could have died of a heart attack from eating so many of those things. Scarlet got to enjoy weeks on end of her cousins Abby, Karter, and Luke. They were adorable together.

Making Play Dough food. I'm worried that Scarlet looks like she's going to eat it, based on her tongue sticking out.

In February and March, we celebrated Scarlet's birthday, announced our second pregnancy, and kept ourselves busy with work and school. My sister Rebecca felt prompted to move away from Las Vegas, which was enormously difficult for her. She asked to move in with us, which was a bit laughable considering our lack of space, but we're laughable people, so we said yes. We bought a bunk bed to make the sleeping accommodations work and set it up where Scarlet's single bed used to be. Scarlet was enormously excited for Becca to come, or at least, she got very excited when she discovered the new bed in her room.

As I got more pregnant, it got less easy for me to do physical things with Scarlet, like take her on walks to the park and the library, so I relied heavily on our bubble machine. She'd run through that thing for a good hour and we used it almost every day through the spring and summer.

For April conference, Josh and I were able to attend the Sunday afternoon session in the conference center. We thoroughly enjoyed the session. It's always fun to attend in person.

 For Easter Sunday, I convinced Scarlet to wear a hat, which was no mean feat. She refused to keep it on for more than five minutes but I loved that she wore a hat to church like some old southern woman.

 My mom and sister happened to be in town for easter weekend, so they helped me hide eggs and helped Scarlet find them. She did not get the concept but it was amusing to see her with her little bucket.

 Then my sister Becca got a job working at the zoo, which offered the perk of her family members getting 50% zoo memberships. We weren't about to pass up that jewel, so I bought a membership for the year and took Scarlet half a dozen times. We definitely got our money's worth since we could ride the carousel and train limitless times. Scarlet loved the carousel so much. She'd ride it multiple times if it wasn't too busy at the zoo and we didn't have to get back in line. Here are a few pictures I have on hand, but this barely scratches the surface for how many times she rode that thing.

Riding with me.

Riding with my sister Sarah.

Riding with my sister Emily. And me.

In May, my parents-in-law moved to Kaysville. Josh drove up to help them unpack their furniture but I stayed home with Scarlet because I was seven months pregnant at the time and fairly useless at hauling heavy furniture. Josh said a bunch of his parents' new neighbors came out of their houses to introduce themselves and help move things inside. It was such a friendly gesture and they've loved living near such wonderful people.

Also in May I ran my silly 5k. It was fun to do it while pregnant because it made me feel more like a warrior but I hope I'm not pregnant the next time I do it, because it was also incredibly tough.

 Then came June. June was awesome. I was CONVINCED that James would come at least a week late, like Scarlet did. I finished my master's degree on the 25th and just barely breathed a sigh of relief when the labor pains started. Early Sunday evening I was struggling through my typical headache and the contractions came on in a way I hadn't experienced with Scarlet. Until my water broke, I didn't know I was in labor with Scarlet, but James had a whole 24 hours of labor before he actually came. I went to dinner with my in-laws and suffered through some increasing discomfort and mild pain before heading home. Josh and I put Scarlet to bed and a few hours later we also went to sleep. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep and I was right. By midnight the contractions were painful enough that I was wide awake and counting the minutes in between contractions.

I actually signed onto work that morning because I had two huge current projects that I just really felt I needed to finish before I could go on maternity leave. I knew this was my last chance so I spent the morning editing items like an idiot in between deeply, deeply annoying contractions. I stopped when I got a migraine and took drugs and sent Josh for a Dr. Pepper at the store. Then I paced around the apartment with Josh for a few hours. Josh was so kind. He stayed home from work of course, and kept Scarlet from jumping into my arms, which is all she seemed to want to do for some reason. Poor Becca didn't know what to do. She didn't realize that labor took so long, so all morning while she got dressed and ready for her job, she kept looking nervously at me as I paced and breathed and Josh held me during the particularly bad ones.

By 2:00 in the afternoon I couldn't take it anymore and told Josh that the contractions were close enough together (90 seconds) that I needed to go the hospital. I couldn't breathe through the contractions any longer and I thought I was going to die in my rocking chair, so he called his mom to come pick up Scarlet and then we drove to the hospital. Riding in a car and going over any bump in the road during a contraction will forever be burned on my brain as the single worse experience of my life. Seriously. The worst. I tried to love Josh while he drove but I think I might have murdered him if I could have reached him across the car.

James came that night around 6:30. His labor was three times as difficult as Scarlet's. I was really struggling through a migraine and his contractions were unbelievably strong and I hadn't slept since Saturday night and here it was Monday night. I was completely done and the pain was excruciating. Scarlet was kind to me. James totally hated me. The booger.

It didn't help that he was ten pounds. That kid was awful to deliver. It gives me serious pause about having another one. The after-labor contractions that night and the next two days were pretty awful too. Apparently those only come after you've had multiple babies. Because that seems fair.

Josh gave him his first bath while I stayed in the room. I was too sore that night to bathe him and Josh really wanted him cleaned up as soon as possible. Frankly, I did not care one way or the other. As long as I didn't have to stand.

Scarlet meeting her baby brother for the first time.

Anyway, here is a picture of James the week after he was born, just barely squeezing into his newborn outfit the night we left the hospital. He literally only fit into it the one time. Then he hulked out and never looked back.

I spent my maternity leave like this: 

Undressed and holding a newborn. That is seriously all I did. Scarlet was fascinated with James and hasn't lost her fascination. She can't bear to be away from him for very long and I quickly learned that if James is somewhere, Scarlet is sure to be nearby.

In July we went down to Las Vegas to visit my family and show off the new Bohman baby. I also convinced Josh that we could go to Tuacahn to see Beauty and the Beast and leave our children with my family. I grew up going to Tuacahn and in fact had seen that exact play ten years earlier, but Josh had never gone. We had amazing seats and the weather was marvelous. It was very hard (like, physically painful) to leave James for so long, mostly because I desperately needed to nurse him by the time we returned, but the play was amazing and we had so much fun. It was a sort of babymoon (does that count when you go after the baby is born?) for us and we enjoyed the short separation from the kids to just talk with each other.

When we got back, we found Scarlet had climbed into James's pack-n-play to sleep. She does NOT fit in it, but hey, if her baby brother can do it, it must be worth trying. We thought that was hilarious.

Let's see. That takes us to August. In August we blessed James in the same outfit Josh was blessed in. I think it looks like some sort of lederhosen but I liked the history behind it. Scarlet was dressed in my baby dress, so the tradition appealed to me.

At the end of the month, we spent a week in Glacier National Park with Josh's parents and siblings. We loved the hikes and it was beautiful, but Scarlet refused to walk and insisted on being carried, so she had a few meltdowns when we refused. I got a little sore carrying James in his carrier on my chest, but I also had a hard time letting him go to another family member. Hormones. It was a beautiful visit, but hard since we were still adjusting to our new family.

Me and Scarlet on a hike.

Josh got to fish, which was something he'd really been looking forward to.

The scenery was pretty unrivaled though.

The pacifier helped with the tantrums.

The pacifier didn't always help, though.

 In September we went to Las Vegas again for Super Family Fun Day (or SFFD, which we pronounce as though it were a vowel-less word). Scarlet got to make a cardboard car with the other children for our drive-in movie night. It was a lot of fun that weekend but exhausting, as traveling and long days always are.

Josh and I also celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary by staying at the Waldorf-Astoria in Park City and eating at a fancy restaurant. We took James because I was nursing, but we left Scarlet to spend the night with her grandparents. She loved it and we loved picking her up in the morning.

In October, we had my sister and her children come up for their traditional Cornbelly's corn maze visit. I wish I had pictures of that but my darn broken phone lost them all.

James outgrew the bassinet feature on his pack-n-play when he could roll onto his back, so we had to lower it to keep him safe. I know he's going to outgrow it entirely in a blink of an eye and have to join Scarlet on the bunk bed. They stay little for so short a time.

He got kicked out of his parents' bedroom at the same time as we lowered the flooring of the pack-n-play. He sleeps through the night now that he can't hear me toss and turn. It's marvelous to get a night's sleep again.

We also enjoyed our ward trunk or treat. Scarlet was Anna and James was Olaf. She went trick or treating for the first time and seemed to be amazed that total strangers gave her candy for no reason at all. It was a magical night for her.

Then it was November. We decided to be super adult and take family photos.

Well, okay, maybe not entirely adult. We hired my photographer sister to take pictures and she couldn't resist a little photoshop. I think it's hilarious.

Josh grew a beard for Movember and he liked it so much that he didn't shave until last week. He swears it kept his face warmer this winter and that he'd like to grow it again. I'm not so keen but I can appreciate how nice it looked while it lasted. This is his scraggly masterpiece just before shaving.

I love the red hue.

We also went down to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving. It was my mom's year to host (she hosts all of her family every other year and the in-laws host the other year) so the house was packed with people. We did manage to squeeze in a picture of everyone before eating, which was a small miracle.

 Josh, Becca, Scarlet, James, and I all got sick coming back to Utah, so we needed a week to recover from Thanksgiving. That seems to happen a lot when we travel, which helped us determine it would be unwise to go down for Christmas. Instead, we stayed in Utah and saw the lights at Temple Square and went to Zoo Lights. We decorated our apartment as usual and filled up our stockings.

That's our silhouette. Fancy, right?

That's better. Hooray for lighting!

Becca captured this artistic little number. I love the Spirit at Temple Square!

Scarlet was pretty psyched to be at the zoo at night.

I bought my stocking years ago and Josh used his old childhood stocking (I didn't have a childhood stocking), so this year I bought a matching stocking for Scarlet and James, and I picked one up for Josh too so we could be uniform. Or close to it, since this year they had white trim instead of the dark green they had when I bought mine a couple years ago. I don't know why it bothers me that my stocking it not the same. I should just see it as a sign that I'm special.

We opened one present each on Christmas eve and the rest on Christmas morning. This was Scarlet's first year of understanding what it means to open presents, so she enjoyed finding out what new toys she now owned. She also enjoyed selecting presents under the tree to give to each family member. Christmas is ten thousand times more enjoyable with young children.

Church Christmas outfits. I'd be in it, but someone needs to take the picture.

Ward Christmas breakfast. Scarlet was a lot less afraid of Santa this year.

Choosing which present to pass out next.

This one was for Daddy to open.

One of Josh's nerd gifts for his stocking was a lump of gallium, which is a metal with an extremely low melting point. It melts in your hand like an m&m, though I wouldn't recommend eating it.

Scarlet got really excited about her plastic horses that came in her stocking.

The kids were sick at Christmastime with coughs and runny noses and fussiness, so we tried to stay home for the last week of the year. Becca worked at her job and packed up her stuff and my parents came up on New Year's Eve to help her carry her things to Idaho. They left the next morning and suddenly our apartment was emptier than it had been since February. It was a bit of a heartbreak to lose Becca but I appreciated having more space for the children. Josh and I moved James into Scarlet's bedroom and suddenly all the rooms had more space in them to hold our things. The apartment felt large again like it hasn't since we first moved from a one-bedroom apartment to this one. I still miss Becca but I love the room.

This year is full of potential for adventure. As usual I have a million new year's goals and I'm failing miserably already with most of them, but that's the beauty of goals. You try and you try and the effort turns you into something better than you were the year before, despite the lack of total accomplishment. I'm looking forward to what this wonderful year has in store for my little family. It's been an incredible journey so far.

Happy New Year!

Forays into Rexburg

I told myself it was stupid to visit Idaho in the middle of January, but I missed my sister Rebecca, who was dorming with my sister Sarah while they both attended BYU-I. So, like a chump, I decided to visit them on MLK day since I had a day off from work. Josh decided to work a few hours of overtime so he stayed in Utah. I bundled the kids up and packed extra coats and strollers in our car and we were off by 7:30 that morning. We quickly hit rain, then a torrent, and then snow. It cleared up for a bit and then I crossed into the Idaho border and all bets were off. Guys. SNOW. Snow like you wouldn't believe. Nobody could pass anyone else because the fast lane was completely covered in snow. We all cruised at around 40 mph for an hour or so before a snow plow got onto the freeway and cleared a few dozen miles up for us. We snailed behind the plow until he exited and then the weather loosened up a bit and allowed me to pass some big rigs and pick up speed again. I stopped for gas about 50 miles outside of Rexburg and made it into town by 11:30.

Some tips for traveling without your partner but with young children:
-Pack their coats but don't make them wear them. They'll bake inside the car and it forces you to loosen their seat belt straps, which is never a good thing.
-Bring an electronic toy laptop for your three-year-old. She'll play with it for at least two hours, which will make your trip way easier.
-Keep easily accessible snacks opened and ready to go on the passenger seat beside you. Passing back bottles of water, cheese slices, crackers, and fruit pouches for your toddler will be a breeze. Also, feeding your six-month-old freeze-dried yogurt bites one at a time as you drive is also surprisingly easier than it seems.
-Bring a book on cd. Duh. Driving alone is dull and dangerous. Occupying your mind safely will turn tedium into entertainment.
-Bring plenty of water because you're always thirstier than you think when you drive for long stretches.
-Don't forget to share in some snacks yourself. Next time, though, try to peel the boiled eggs before packing them for the trip.

When we got to the girls' apartment, Scarlet ran right into Becca's arms, she was so excited to see her and play with her. It was really sweet. James surprised me with how much he delighted in seeing Becca. I'd forgotten that they had a relationship before she left two weeks ago. I keep expecting babies to forget people and faces as easily as I do. Apparently they do not.

I fed James and Scarlet some baby food and yogurt when we first got there and changed diapers and took certain potty-training individuals to the bathroom and then I was free a bit to talk and hug my sisters. We all got ready to leave the apartment and head out to campus. I've been to BYU-I a handful of times for EFY and visiting friends, so I was somewhat familiar with the campus but it had been years since I'd last been there. The snow and slush in town was atrocious--far worse than anything I'd seen on the roads leading into town--but we had to drive to campus because the strollers wouldn't have been very effective in all the snow.

Once on campus we packed the kids in the strollers and took them to various buildings via the heated sidewalks. Becca had to document various pieces of art in the buildings for a humanities project so we wandered around several buildings. Sarah and I hit up a vending machine while Becca worked and then the whole experience was a lot more fun. Scarlet enjoyed sharing the snacks, so she was pretty thrilled, and James had completely conked out in his car seat, so we just covered him up against the falling snow and continued our trek around campus.

After Becca had completed her project, we all went to a bayou-themed sandwich shop called Gator Jack's. I treated the girls to lunch and we had a great time. Sarah had served a mission in Georgia/Florida and Becca had served in North Carolina, so the campy decor got them reminiscing about real Spanish moss and the chiggers that hide in them and actual alligators and all kinds of nonsense. They are so cute together.

Scarlet is hiding between Becca and Sarah. You can see her sandwich and cookie in the styrofoam container but she is absent from the photograph.

Next we took off to Wal-mart, which is too far for the girls to walk and they don't have a car. I became their taxi service so they could stock up on cleaning supplies, groceries, and other sundries for their apartment. By this time, Scarlet was so exhausted that she fell asleep in the shopping cart and didn't wake up when we left the store, buckled and unbuckled her in and out of her carseat, or carried her into the apartment. I've never seen her sleep so heavily.

Back at the apartment we placed her at the foot of the bed and covered her in a blanket while I fed James again and we all chatted one more time.

Then it was time to go. I got the kids packed back into their seats and Scarlet and James were both sleeping at this point. We hit the road around 4 p.m. and although it was rainy and wet, it wasn't terrible for the first hour or so. The weather got worse and it got wetter and I couldn't use my cruise control, which disappointed me more than it should considering it was just cruise control. Then the sun set and it was pretty dark and I was so anxious to get home that I didn't dare slow down so we continued driving at 80 mph in the darkness. The weather improved, thank heavens, and instead of the dread black ice, we had drier and drier roads until I hit Kaysville. Then the sky opened up and drowned us all and the traffic exploded and I had to slow back down to 40 mph again because of the sheer number of cars as opposed to any inclement weather,

We rolled up to our apartment at 7:30 and Scarlet and James were ecstatic to be free from their seats. Josh took over changing them and feeding them while I brought in our coats and trash and little things that gather in a car during a trip of any length. I nursed James and ate some leftover chili and salad and felt myself slowly relaxing. The drive was treacherous and I wouldn't recommend anyone being so reckless as to take a day trip in the coldest month of the year, BUT I had a wonderful time with my sisters and I know Scarlet did too. I'm looking forward to a spring thaw that'll allow us to return to Idaho, this time with Josh in tow.

The Mummy Exhibit

Yesterday morning we went to the Leonardo museum and visited the mummy exhibit. Josh has been itching to go since he saw the first billboard advertising it and it was so fascinating. We saw Egyptian mummies, of course, but also bog mummies and European mummies (accidentally aerated in drafty castle dungeons and discovered centuries later) and South American mummies. We saw Peruvian shrunken heads (made with real human heads minus the skulls and brains--amazing!) and a couple of accidentally mummified corpses from 1760 Hungary. I was fascinated with every bit of the exhibit, especially the Hungarian mummies. It was a 38-year-old woman and her 41-year-old husband and her one-year-old son (she had three children who all died under 2 years of age). They died from tuberculosis along with the other 261 other bodies found in Hungary. The mummies were dressed in replicas of the clothing they were wearing when buried and I found myself more fascinated by those clothes than by the bodies--the flowered pattern of the woman's skirt, the drawstring neckline of her blouse, the man's curved, hob-nailed boots. Everything just seemed like it would take amazing craftsmanship and I was astonished to find that people really dressed that well in such an inconvenient time period. The leatherwork on the boots astounded me. There weren't any machines to make them (nothing to boast about, anyway). Some craftsman did that all on his own. Incredible.

Scarlet did pretty well in the museum. I have to admit, I didn't consider her reaction to the mummies because I honestly didn't think she'd realize what they were. The first mummy caught her notice right away and she paid it cursory attention, but when I brought her close to the second mummy, which, granted, looked far more human, Scarlet started whimpering and reaching out for me to hold her. I hugged her tight and then passed her on to Josh to carry while I pushed James in the stroller. Scarlet grew accustomed and eventually indifferent to the mummies shortly thereafter. She was fascinated by the mummies of children, though, which she kept calling babies. I couldn't tell if she recognized them as actual human babies or dolls, since she calls her dolls babies. Either way, she was pretty relaxed in the exhibit.

One other section of the exhibit fascinated me. In South America, there was some tribe that offered child sacrifices to false gods in response to natural disasters. They selected especially beautiful children to appease these gods and either exsanguinated them, suffocated them, or drugged them to sleep and buried them alive. Horrifying. These children were under three years old. It called to mind the wickedness of the Lamanites and the Nephites at the end of the Book of Mormon, when both nations committed unspeakable horrors and were irredeemably evil. It takes a truly evil society to believe that murdering innocents could be an acceptable act.

The rest of the Leonardo was pretty kid-friendly but not nearly as interesting. Scarlet enjoyed the green screen that showed her on the beach and in space, especially because she was wearing a green sweater so her head floated above the stars. She could also control the migratory direction of a flock of computerized birds on the wall by moving her body this way and that. She liked them chasing her on the wall but kept leaving the marked spot on the floor to run away from them, so she would lose control of the birds. 

We left at naptime and even though Scarlet and James were both surprisingly awake on the drive home, they both had a long, late nap later that day. I'm not sure I'd go again anytime soon, but we enjoyed our first visit to the Leonardo.

Books in 2015

This past year I read a lot of frivolous, fun, guilty pleasure books. I didn't learn a whole lot but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was a fun year for reading. I kept things light because I didn't want to spook myself and give up on reading. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with life and it becomes difficult to do things like get dressed every day or leave the apartment or read books. Because I was in a master's program this year, I thought I'd take it easy with the reading goal and planned on 25 books. I ended up really delving into audiobooks, which I can listen to while doing literally anything else. So I did. And it really helped me surpass my reading goal.

 

Halloween 2015

I was raised on ward trunk-or-treats and my mom was afraid of having her kids wander the ghetto neighborhoods of Las Vegas, so we were never allowed to go trick-or-treating. I never went. After I got married, Josh and I participated in passing out candy for trunk-or-treaters and trick-or-treaters, but of course by then we were too old to beg for candy ourselves. Scarlet has been too young until now to go herself, leading up to the point of this blog: today for the first time, Josh and I were able to go trick-or-treating with our daughter.

My sister and her kids are in town for their annual Halloween visit--Cornbelly's, Boo at the Zoo, Wheeler Farm--and this year the Boo at the Zoo was held the weekend before Halloween so they weren't able to attend. Instead, we decided to go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. I didn't know how receptive our neighbors would be to trick-or-treaters. In our apartment complex, only one porch light was on (ours) and only one family was prepared with candy to pass out (ours). This year we had no trick-or-treaters but I like to be prepared just in case, so we have a lot of leftover candy. My point about our complex is that I wasn't certain people would be very willing to pass out candy in the houses surrounding our complex. Compounding that issue was the fact that we got a late start on trick-or-treating after dinner. By the time everyone was dressed and ready, it was eight o'clock, which happens to be Scarlet's bedtime. Josh said his parents used to lock up and turn out the lights by eight o'clock on Halloween, and that he used to trick-or-treat at six. That made me really worried that we were too late.

But I had no reason to fear. We only went down a few local neighborhoods and in less than an hour, my nephews and nieces had full buckets of candy, with three full-size candy bars apiece. I was amazed at the generosity of these people and felt a lot of gratitude for them because they made my family so happy on their visit. In Las Vegas, my mom's neighborhood gets a lot of traffic because people drive their kids into the neighborhoods and stay in their cars on the street the entire time, so there's a ridiculous traffic jam along all the streets in the entire block. My mom resents so many people being bussed in from all over the valley because she goes broke trying to get enough candy to last the night, and I completely understand. That seems to take away from the spirit of the holiday when you seek out the best neighborhoods to try to score the most candy. It's also hard in Las Vegas because the city never sleeps, so teenagers will ring doorbells at close to ten at night to fill up their bags one more time. A family friend who lives in the same neighborhood as my mom posted on Facebook tonight that in two and a half hours, she passed out more than five hundred pieces of candy. It's just insanity there.

In my neighborhood here, however, I was only met with gracious and generous people who shared their candy with smiles and compliments on costumes. It was such a wonderfully positive experience that I vowed to also be one of those fun homeowners who shares candy all night long and enjoys every minute of it. I want to pay forward the happiness my family felt tonight.

Scarlet was dressed up as Anna from Frozen and James was Olaf (I had to make his costume because the stores didn't carry his size). We all stopped by a house that puts on a Halloween-themed light show after trick-or-treating, to end our night before walking home. It was a wonderful night of fun and a perfect example of why this is one of my all-time favorite holidays!

Dinner With the Fishes

Josh and I have gotten out of the habit of going on weekly dates. It was so easy when we were first married to consider any activity a "date", that we didn't really go out of our apartment much. And now that we have children we've sort of allowed our own habit of laziness and abhorrence of planning to overwhelm our urge for date night. In other words, we don't go on many dates. Not deliberately, in any case.

This is extra pathetic since my sister is living with us for the rest of the year, and she just happens to have Friday nights off from work so she can absolutely babysit for us. She's even urged us to go on dates and insisted that we let her babysit. We have totally wasted this unique opportunity to date over the summer and I'm just now starting to feel the pings of regret from it.

So, to sate my conscience, I insisted we go to dinner together on Friday. Josh had been wanting to try Red Lobster for several months now (a perfect example of how apathetic we are--Josh cares just enough to want to eat somewhere but not enough to do anything about it for several months. We need help.), so we decided to try it out. I know it's a chain restaurant and there's one every ten feet throughout the southwest, but neither of us had ever tried it before. We ventured to the nearest one and found its substantial parking lot completely crammed with cars. Not a single parking spot in sight, including the side of the road where several cars had parked against the sidewalk outlining the parking lot. I don't know if there was some fancy shindig going down at this particular restaurant or we had chosen the busiest time to eat or if Red Lobster was the greatest dining experience known to man, but we were not willing to wade through the crowd of people standing outside the doors to find out how long our wait time would be. Instead we drove the extra fifteen minutes to the next nearest one.

This one was deceptively larger on the inside than the outside. We walked into a dim gray-colored foyer with a tank of depressed lobsters next to the host desk. The air smelled like high-powered air conditioning with a faint undertone of fish. That felt about right, so we ventured to put our names down and discovered our wait would be about ten minutes. Not too shabby. I went over to the tank and stared at the soulless eyes of the giant ocean bugs before saying quietly, "You're all going to be dead soon." It wasn't a taunt so much as a statement of surprised awareness. There's something kind of chilling about seeing your food alive and (I think) happy(?) before you plan on eating it.

In any case, we were seated quickly and surrounded by a lot of old people. I mean, a LOT of old people. It was still somewhat early for dinner, I guess. We'd left for dinner around 5 or 5:30 and with the extra driving and the waiting, it couldn't have been quite six o'clock yet. Happy hour for the elderly, I guess. It did sort of feel like we had encroached upon their turf and that we should leave the restaurant and let them claim it for their generation. But we stayed and ordered lobster-artichoke dip as an appetizer (I hope the lobster meat came from one of the already-dead specimens in the kitchen and not from the tank in the front). We had a couple of boring side salads and then I ate a parmesan-crusted tilapia and Josh enjoyed a seafood platter with crab legs, lobster tail, and shrimp.

I'm not much of a seafood eater so I played it safe and I'm glad I did. I enjoyed my meal. Josh had a little trouble figuring out how to crack open crab legs (he asked the waitress, who was really helpful) and then he had a whole lot of fun eating all the food. We both agreed the crab meat was the tastiest, although it was a lot of work for a little bit of food. And I had to maintain my distance from all the exoskeleton cracking and avoid touching the creepy pointy claws while Josh yanked and ripped open the body of some poor crab. I normally struggle pulling apart chicken bones so I usually buy boneless meats from the grocery store; seafood "bones" make me even more squeamish because they're even creepier-looking, so I was pretty uncomfortable during the meat-gathering portion of our meal.

As the evening progressed, the restaurant seemed to fill with even more geriatrics. They came out of the woodwork. It was peculiarly unsettling to see so many old people congregate to the same location. I don't have any problem with old people but I'm not used to seeing so many in one place and this was definitely more than a few. It was bizarre.

Our conversation was really fun and we both managed to avoid talking about our kids, which we sometimes struggle to do on dates. We don't date often but when we do, we try to make the conversation about us and our personal interests rather than our little brood, to ensure that we're working on our roles as spouses rather than our roles as parents. It was a delightful evening. I was reminded once again how much I love my husband. He's so easy to talk to and he has wonderfully interesting things to say. As a decided and committed introvert, it's sometimes difficult for me to coax conversation out of him at home. He can happily spend an evening silently engrossed in technology. I have to force more than one-syllable responses from him when he's particular enthralled in his chosen entertainment. But removed from technology and focused solely on decent food in a semi-private environment, Josh is resplendent. We discussed stock options and their effects on companies (Josh had to clarify a few minor points of confusion for me), growing up in the west, Tinder, eastern European culture, cost-of-living raises, the hierarchy of management, and a myriad of other random-but-somehow-fluidly-connected topics. I had so much fun and hated to leave but nursing mothers have an internal ticking clock for separating from their young, so we had to head back home.

Upon arrival, we discovered my poor sister holding a screaming James and standing beside a screaming Scarlet. Scarlet didn't want to get ready for bed so she was vocally protesting, and James did not appreciate having been put in his swing earlier in the evening and was also vocally protesting. Josh and I each chose a child and went right back to our roles as parents. We love our life and we love our children, but it was immeasurably pleasant to spend a couple of hours taking care of our other roles. It made returning to our parental responsibilities even more enjoyable.