STAY - cation #4--more benefits

Here's another benefit of having our vacation at home--we have our babysitters available! So, Ted and I went out to dinner tonight. As is typical for our dates, we went to dinner and shopping. It's really not very glamorous, I suppose, but it's what we do. Several weeks ago we went out while friends kept our kids. That's always bonus because we don't have to pay (well, we pay in reciprocity). So you'd think that we would step it up...here's how that one played out. We headed to Natick where they have a very nice mall. It's really two malls in one--the normal mall with food court, Sears, Claire's, Limited, etc, and then the upscale half of the mall with small boutiques I've never heard of. We went there because they have a P.F. Chang's, but they had over a 2 hour wait, so we tried The Cheesecake Factory-also a 2 hour wait. It was at this point that we ended up at the Barbecue restaurant we mentioned earlier. This is where it gets even sadder. After barbecue we went to Wal-Mart. WAL-MART!!!

And we were happy about it. It was the first time I had been to one in about 5 months, which is probably why I was happy, and what can I say--we're from Arkansas--my college town had one of the very first Super Wal-Mart stores way back when.

So that was our date a month or so ago. Tonight we went to Border Cafe. Halfway through the day I started to think that I might need to cancel the babysitter--Ted was in mucho pain from sinuses and was dead asleep. I didn't think that he would really want to leave the house. But he did, and Border Cafe has Dr. Pepper and Mexican--our favorites. On my brother's recommendation this past summer, I had the carne asada tacos. Very good--thanks Brad. Afterwards, we went to Lowe's for lightbulbs and Office Depot for tax software. How sad are we?

Earlier today we went to a Children's Museum in Easton. The driving force for this visit was the fact that they have the area's Fetch! lab--based on one of our kids' favorite PBS tv shows Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman. It's a very small museum housed in one of Easton's old firehouses. It was small but PACKED! Kids everywhere. And LOUD. Which probably didn't help Ted's headache. That and the fact that I sent him into the woodworking room with the kids to pound nails into boards. hmmmmmm...probably wasn't our best plan.

The museum had a table with face paints and a mirror on the wall that the kids could use to paint their faces, which explains the funny markings on the girls.