Date Night & Pen Pals

last night was date night. it is one my thirty before thirty goals to work up to at least 2 date nights a month, this was our first one in 4 weeks. since moving to Fresno and away from 6 grandparents to our kids, plus several "honorary grandparents" or older couples who just love our bambinos, we've had a hard time feeling comfortable asking people to babysit the wee ones. on one hand, we don't know very many older couples who don't have any kids of their own living with them, and on the other we just don't know that many people super well yet. so when our church decided to do a "date night" for the parents at the church to drop of their kids for 2 1/2 hours, we jumped on it! 

we went out to eat at a local restaurant. while the food was pricey and not that good and the restaurant was noisy, we still enjoyed being together with no interruptions from our kids or having to cut up food into small pieces. after dinner we walked across the street to a lovely little bakery. 

i ordered a red velvet cupcake (which was a sparkly fiesta in my mouth) and a bowl of coffee. yep, that's right... a BOWL. look at the size of that thing! no, that is not a mini cupcake... it's standard size. that has got to be the largest coffee i have ever seen. ever. 

mmm. cream cheese frosting. by the way, what does red velvet taste like? i tried to figure it out by eating just the cake without the frosting and it really doesn't have a distinct taste. red #40, maybe?

 my Mr. had the german chocolate cupcake. 

we decided to try our hand at checkers. i had never played. he was black and i was red. 

 duh, winning.

 me + bowl of coffee dominating my upper body. i almost drowned. 

happy without the babies for a moment. (super blurry, sorry.)

onto other news... big A got a letter in the mail. SO. CUTE. 

our friend and neighbor that lives a few doors down dropped this in the mail. 

super good writing for a 5 year old! 

big A's return letter.

 big A is 4 and we are going through hooked on phonics together. he's doing really well and has completed all the uppercase and is halfway through the lowercase. he was pretty excited to put his writing skills to use. in case you can't quite read it it says:

Dear Noah,

Yes I want to be your pen pals. 

Asher

this just kills me. 

little a had to make one for our neighbor's little sister. ugh. i just love my kids. 

anyway, here is us.