Weekend Getaway

I've been wanting to do this for a very very long time, and finally this weekend we were able to make it happen.  We dumped the kids at my parents' house (we sold this to the boys as "A Special Weekend with Grammy and Pop-Pop, no mommy or daddy allowed") and enjoyed a weekend to ourselves.  I call this Retirement Planning, because someday the kids are going to grow up and move out (and yes, they will be moving out because we'll charge an exorbitant room rate) and we need to be prepared for what it's like to be together alone.  So far, we're doing okay, because it was a lot of fun to be together alone. ;-)

I'm trying to get out of the dating rut that we've been in lately, basically dinner and a movie once a month, maybe twice if we're lucky.  So I'm looking into new, fun dates (I'm saying "I" because Casey thinks that dinner-and-a-movie is the perfect date, but he's going along my notion because he's wise and knows it's good for his health in so many ways.)  So Friday night we just did a slight variation on the dinner-and-a-movie routine.  We had dinner downtown at an Irish Pub, then went to see a play at the local university.  We had a fun time and now Casey's even looking forward to seeing their production of King Lear this spring.

Then Saturday we took off for the mountains, the quaint town of Blowing Rock.  We stayed at an inn that was just off Main Street, so we were able to walk around the town and visit the antique, pottery and gift shops without needing to get in our car.  We took a hike along a creek with several waterfalls.  It was a moderate hike, tough enough to give us a good workout without wiping us out, but something we would not have been able to do with the boys.  We even did some geocaching before the weather got too cold.  Sunday was pretty cold, windy and snowy.  We did some shopping at the outlets and then warmed up in our room with some good books.  Casey's reading Oliver Twist and I just started The Friday Night Knitting Club. Then we did something really crazy: We joined Facebook.  We finally caved into the urging from our college friends, my brothers and (this is where we recognized that we are so not with the times) my dad and all his siblings who are all on Facebook.  So now were having fun tweaking our profiles and re-connecting with old friends.

Then this morning we headed back home to see our boys. It was really nice to get away, but it was also really nice to hug our boys and see their smiles again.