DATE NIGHT!!

Ahhhhh…at long, long last, we had an honest-to-goodness Shafferland date night. And. It. Was. Glorious.

Because we were on duty at Ryan's mom's house on Valentine's Day, we had to take our date day on a different day. Ryan worked on Saturday, but for the first time in a long time, he got off work at lunchtime, so we were able to soak up the rest of the day together. I was absolutely giddy.

Weather wasn't an issue (insert praise hands here) so we were able to head down to Indianapolis for some fun! Ryan made lattes, and we set out!

For many months, we've been toying with the idea of replacing some of our furniture. (Some of ours has reached a point of life where it really would only fit in a youth room, so it's time to look at changes.) We enjoy visiting furniture stores to see what we can see. Or at least we usually enjoy visiting them. We really detest being accosted, so some stores are painful. But our first stop on Saturday was SO MUCH FUN!

We went to Bob's Discount Furniture. It was like the carnival of furniture stores. You'll see why in a moment.

To start though, forget furniture. How great would THIS be in our living room!??!?

We played musical furniture, hopping from one thing to the next, trying out comfort and being totally judgmental on looks. (You can do that with furniture. Just not people.)

And then I found this. And I was smitten, hopelessly in love, and ready to take him home to meet the family:

I cant even talk about it. How adorable is he??? (Ryan understands my unhealthy affection for cute desks and just said, "Did you want me to get your picture with it?")

Other amazing amenities of the store? A café where everything (candy, ice cream, and coffee) is FREE.

And the balloon animal artist gifted me the cutest ladybug.

So because we are entirely won over by free coffee and balloon animals, this was our favorite furniture store stop of the day and everything else failed to live up to the hype. Even stores we had previously ranked high on the list.

Things I learned in February: Ryan did not know about Half Price Books, which means I have entirely failed him as a wife. But he kindly took me to one and to my credit, I only purchased ONE book, which he actually scouted out for me!

We had some gift cards to use, and our dinner plan was to go to Abuelo's (or Alberto's, as Ryan calls it), but Ryan found out we also had a gift card to The Cheesecake Factory, so he suggested we go there, get a piece of cheesecake for each of us (to go) and then go to dinner. We could have dessert and coffee at home. OKAY!

So we went to The Cheesecake Factory. Waited in line for a half hour to ORDER two pieces of cheesecake. That was just to order. Then we waited another half hour for our two pieces to be boxed and handed to us. If you're counting, that's ONE HOUR IN LINE for dessert to go.

Know what will narrow down your choices REAL quick? Posted calorie counts. Some of the pieces had almost as many calories as the recommended daily allowance. I did discover, however, that they had a low carb cheesecake that you could get with fresh strawberries. I got that, and Ryan got the not-so-low-carb choice of a peanut butter cup concoction. :)

THEN we went to Abuelo's. It was pretty late (for dinner - at least on Bekah time) when we arrived, but there was a line, so we had to wait again. Our waiter was fantastic, and we tried to be nicer to him than the people at the table next to us, who kept telling him how hungry they were. Well, you know, it's a restaurant, so hunger is somewhat a given. (Eyeroll.)

We shared a fajita dinner, so please note that the plate in each of our pictures is actually the SAME plate. My mom thought we both got one of those! (I sure hope the Romaine recall is over because I had that as my tortilla shell!)

(We also had leftovers on that, by the way.)

When we were done with dinner, we came home, brewed some coffee, and dug into our cheesecake. Braeya was not interested in the low carb version.

This was seriously such a fun day for us. It was just what we needed, and I loved every single minute. Three cheers for date nights! And gift cards! Thank you, gift card givers!