Super "Date" Night

Yes, my wife and I had a “date” night last night. Our daughter was invited to a sleepover birthday party and my wife made arrangements for my son to go over to a friend’s house for the evening. He wasn’t scheduled to sleepover but later on in the evening my wife received a phone call asking if our son could stay the night. This meant we were kid-less for the next 15 hours. We did take advantage with an adult date night for the first time in awhile. Our Valentines’ Day didn’t exactly turn out how either one of us would have like but last night did make up for Valentines’ Day.

We decided to take in a movie and we were trying to coordinate a dinner and a movie and being able to pick up our son at a reasonable time. However; when we received the news he would be spending the night there was no need to rush. We went to see “Slumdog Millionaire” to see what all the hype was about. My wife always wants to see all the movies nominated for the Best Picture but I don’t know when the last year she actually accomplished this was. We haven’t seen any of the movies nominated for Best Picture and I was surprised most of those movies weren’t showing at our local movie theaters. “Slumdog Millionaire” was showing and of all the movies this one piqued my interest the most. Another movie we were thinking about seeing “The Wrestler” but we did decide on “Slumdog Millionaire”.

I was not disappointed in the movie and this was one of the best movies I have seen in a very long time. I thought everything about the movie was excellent from the cinematography to the acting. I also thought the storyline was very intriguing and I am not sure how any could NOT like this movie. Yes, there were some difficult seems but there were some uplifting scenes. I was captivated in the first 30 minutes where the slums of Mumbai were featured and I thank God I live in the United States. Yes, I know the economy is tanking and there is so much uncertainty in this world but living in the United States is a privilege an honor compared to those slums. India may not consider itself a third world country but in this film I couldn’t help but to think of it as a third world country. Yes, I was very impressed with the movie and I can see why it was selected as the film of the year.

My wife did like the movie but I don’t believe she liked the movie as much as I did. I think her expectations were a little too high and the film didn’t meet those expectations. I expected the movie to be good and those expectations were met and then some. We talked about the movie while we had a very nice dinner at a nearby restaurant. Our local mall is putting in a P.F. Changs which won’t be open for at least another month. I have written about this restaurant before and it was funny because my boss was telling me the other day that he doesn’t like P.F. Changs; I guess different strokes for different folks. I like P.F. Changs because I actually have an option which doesn’t really happen too often. Last night we went to the California Pizza Kitchen and had a very nice appetizer of hummus followed by some pizza.

The evening was wonderful it was equally as wonderful to be with just my wife for the evening. We don’t get to do this often enough and I have heard that married couples need to schedule a date night to keep the marriage fresh. I can see why “date” night does help to keep things fresh and hopefully we can do this at least once a month as we go forward. My wife is a great person and we don’t have that alone time to discuss just us, everything seems to center on the children but in a few years (I know this is down the road but as fast as time goes that time will pass very quickly) it will be just us again. I do love my wife tremendously and spending an evening and a little part of this morning was a wonderful medicine.

We even snuck in some frozen yogurt from our favorite self serve yogurt place on our way home. As we came home instead of retiring to bed we watched the last installment of “Heroes” and I have no idea of what to make or this program. This capped off a wonderful evening and this morning with no children in the house we “slept in” and continued our ritual of watching the CBS “Sunday Morning” program. This was a wonderful start to a very relaxing day at home. Tomorrow my wife starts her new job and I start running here and there with the children. My daughter has softball practice and thankfully I do have flexibility at work so I can run my daughter to softball practice on Mondays and Thursdays. My wife did this for almost two years so in the next few months it will be my pleasure to be “Softball Dad”.