Dates and Versaries and Such

THANK YOU for all your kind birthday wishes yesterday! I had a wonderful day (with wayyyyy too much food) and I'll tell you about it soon!

I wanted to back up and catch you up on some of the fun we've had since coming home from our cruise. I spent so much time telling you about vacation that I got behind on normal life! So let me remedy that a little bit today.

When we came home from the cruise, Ryan still had a couple of days off work, so we spent one going on a date down to Indianapolis. (That was actually the day we found Al, our new couch. But we also had other fun!)

We had a gift card to Red Robin, so we went to lunch. Apparently it's not a hot spot for Tuesday lunches, so we had the place nearly to ourselves.

 I usually get a turkey burger and bottomless broccoli there, but the waitress talked me into the Avo-cobb-o salad. I was skeptical, but it was absolutely delicious. You know how it goes with grilled chicken salads. That chicken could be awfully dry. Not so with this salad!!!

On our way home, we went to some treasure marts. Ryan found treasures.

And that's what we do on dates!

A couple of days later, we went out again, because it was our 77th monthiversary! Ryan actually planned this date...and it was a winner!

We had to miss having lunch together, because I had to go to the dentist. (Eek!) But that evening, he said he had a surprise place to take me after dinner. Turned out we weren't hungry for dinner, so we just went.

Oh! Here's the official 77 month photo:

We started out on our trek and I had no idea where we were going.

He finally told me he was taking me to a little walk-up ice cream stand in Peru (that's a city in Indiana...not the country...for those of you reading from far away). It's called East End Double Dip and Pizza. There's a pizza side (carryout only) and an ice cream side (walk up only). They do have some outdoor tables, and while the weather wasn't amazing that night, it wasn't raining for once, and it was warm enough to sit outside.

A couple of Ryan's co-workers love this place, so he had heard the strawberry shortcake was delicious there. We are HUGE fans of the Ivanhoe's strawberry shortcake, so we thought we'd check this out and compare.

Well, size-wise, they're awfully close! (as in...HUGE!)

We were really glad we shared it, since it was so big.

Our verdict? We decided we like the actual cake better at Ivanhoe's. It's some sort of delicious, mysterious, warm biscuit that is SO GOOD. This cake was more of a cubed pound cake, and while it was definitely good, it wasn't the same as the Ivanhoe's shortcake. Personally, though, I liked the strawberries better here. They were juicier and soaked into the cake better. The strawberries at Ivanhoe's never tend to have a lot of residual juice.

But honestly? I just love strawberry shortcake and I'll eat either one!

The longer we sat there, the more Ryan decided he needed a pizza. So before we left, he ordered one and we took it home. (I ate one tiny square, but he had a proper dinner. I do admit it was a good pizza at a great price!)

A couple of fun dates for us!