Cashing in my Super Bowl winnings...

Neither Adam or I really cared who won the Super Bowl...to be honest I don't really ever care.  Adam said he was rooting for the Pats, so I said I would root for the other team.  Adam and I like to make bets...sometimes for just for bragging rights but this time we decided the winner could pick the movie we would watch for our date night on Saturday.  Adam was talking smack through out most of the game until the Giants made an accidental touchdown (apparently they really wanted to wait to run down the clock and not actually score).
I teased Adam about making him see The Vow but lucky for him my college friend came the weekend before and saw it with me.  We ended up seeing One For The Money and going to eat at Red Lobster. 
It was a nice night.  Zachary got to spend time with his Grammy and I got a haircut and spent some time with my husband.

Date Night Movie Night

I am really enjoying our date nights at home.  They are really cheap and you can wear sweats...don't get me wrong I love getting dressed up to go out, however my "nice" clothes are few and far between since living in China (they don't make clothes for girls with curves), being pregnant (I wore regular shirts, stretching them all out and spilling on them) and now staying at home with Zachary (I don't buy anything that I don't mind getting crusted graham cracker, snot and other bodily fluids on), I basically haven't bought anything nice in over 2 years.

We decided to have a movie night.  Since babysitter + movie tickets = $$$$, we watched it from the comfort of our own home.

We watched:

and because I think it's cool...here is the movie trailer.



I got to pick the movie this time.  I love old movies and I have tried to find an oldie that I love, that Adam will enjoy.  I think this was a winner...not one sarcastic remark and I heard a few snickers...plus (and this is big) he didn't fall asleep.

When we plan for a movie night and make it more intentional it feels more like a date than hanging out at home watching a movie.  Since I wanted to make it special I picked up some special snacks:

I even bought a pack of the "extra butter" popcorn to take the place of our usual light

We decided to make this a monthly thing...Adam gets to pick, and I am very excited to go through my recipe books for another special movie night snack.
Maybe someday we will see a movie in a theater again...until then this is PERFECT!

GO PACK!

Adam graduated from NC State and loves watching State play football.  This year wasn't the best for the team but they were asked to play in the Belk Bowl in Charlotte.

How often does your favorite team play near free child care and housing for a Bowl game?  We HAD to go to the game!  So we extended our Chirstmas trip which was nice because we don't get to see my Dalland Grandparents very often.
Scottie (my "little" bro) and Bethany (his wife) came with.  It was nice to have a double date of sushi and football
SIDE NOTE: It is supe strange to be on a double date with my little brother and discuss things like real estate...man we are getting old.
We put on long johns, hats, gloves, scarves, jackets, blankets etc...

and watched the Wolf Pack KICK BUTT!

It was a very exciting game to watch...even for someone with a short attention span like me.

Cree Christmas Party

Adam and I look forward to the Cree Christmas Party all year long.  It is a huge event!  Cree goes above and beyond giving their employees a special night out. 

This year the theme was based on Pan Am.  They had girls dressed as the Pan Am flight attendants and we "traveled" to places like Africa and Las Vegas.
They rent the Raleigh Convention Center and each room has a different theme.  The Africa room had live African acrobats and a live band, the Las Vegas room had casino games, photographers and a DJ.  They had LOTS of amazing food and each Cree employee got 4 free adult beverages.  In addition to the party they provided rides home for people who weren't able to drive themselves home and a discounted rate at the Marriott hotel connected to the convention center. 
How were Adam and I able to spend the night out by ourselves?  My parents were very excited to spend some time with their grandson.  Adam and I took advantage of the discounted rate at the hotel and and enjoyed a full nights sleep while mom and dad took care of the little guy.

7 Months...and a Date Night!

Yesterday evening Adam and I went on our first date ever...well since Zack was born...but it does feel like forever.  The only other time Adam and I ate a meal together without interuption was my cousin's wedding...we had a babysitter then but it wasn't really a date.  It was really nice to eat a meal at the same time and not have to rush.  We also got to go to a Hurricanes game...which we LOVE!  The game was very tame...not too many fights and very few penatlies.  Zack survived...and more importantly our babysitter survived...and said she would do it again!

This has been a BIG month!  We got out the "big boy" toys...things that require Zachary to do things with, however he still puts it all in his mouth.  He can sand up while holding on to things, he rolls all over the place and he crawls backwards.  I have orderd a couple baby gates and some plug covers.  I figure everything else we will take care of as it becomes a problem.  Right now Zacks biggest problem is trying to get somewere and ending up getting caught under the sofa.  We have tried lots of new foods and water in a sippy cup (he isn't really sure how to use the cup yet...but it's lots of fun to bang around and bite!).  He has 2 bottom teeth and no signs of any others coming in yet.
Here are some photo's from this past month!

YUMMMMMMM

still LOVES the bath!

He gets so excited when he sees me coming over with his bowl of food

look at my cutie!

"hmmmm why can't I pick this up?"

right before the freak out...at least we have 1 good pumpkin patch picture

Just Another Day

Adam and I may not celebrate holidays the way most people do, we don’t do special dinners out or get each other gifts.  The other day Adam said that he was worried that we didn’t really do the normal holiday things…we both almost let Valentine’s Day slip by without celebrating.  I absolutely hate that people expect flowers and candy and a fancy dinner on Valentine’s Day just because it’s Valentine’s Day.  I hate that restaurants charge you an arm and a leg for a set menu.  Honestly go out to a fancy restaurant and look around you, there is so much awkwardness.  Now I don’t hate the holiday, I am a holiday lover…remember!  I love the heart shaped cookies, the candy hearts, wearing my Valentine’s Day socks and pink outfit, I loved making cards with my students and reading my all time favorite valentines book “Froggies First Kiss” (a much have if your children enjoy silly stories) and making crafts from red and pink construction paper.  I love that there is another day set aside to show how much you love the people around you, however I would much rather get a random “I love you” gesture on a random Tuesday.

Tonight we plan on going out to dinner, a) because we don’t have many nights left without having to worry about a little boy and b) because I can eat and gosh darn…I will eat!!!! And c) because my wonderful husband thinks we have fallen into a rut and feels like we need to celebrate Valentine’s Day in some way. Now back to what I said before, no we don’t get each other things…honestly we don’t need anything and we have no place to put anything.  Ever since we started going out we decided to take a trip instead.  For Adam’s first birthday while we were dating we went to Wilmington, for my birthday we went to Asheville, etc… our trips lately have been much more exciting…Thailand for our anniversary (even though it happened to be a month late), Macau for Adam’s birthday, Disney for mine, Bali for Thanksgiving and Australia for Christmas. 

I am not the romantic type, flowers are nice but they die, a box of fancy chocolates are great but I would prefer a bag of M&M’s any day,  a teddy bear is nice but what do I do with it tomorrow?  So as a practical girl who would much rather go to dinner where they don’t force you to eat off a set menu or would much rather save money for something special then get jewelry that I won’t wear we are making our Valentine’s Day special by hanging out together…we do this a lot but we enjoy it and I look forward to just another day with my husband and best friend. 

Date Night Revisited!

Last night Adam and I went on our first date night in a long time.  We went to the German Restaurant in town.  This restaurant opened during my morning sickness and I haven’t been able to eat anything there besides French Fries…and not really those because of all the smells.  My memory of this restaurant was making it so it was the last place I wanted to go (to be honest all the great restaurants were totally unappetizing).  I guess all I needed was an updated experience.  Adam and I shared Fajitas and a cob salad.  It was an amazing dinner and it totally exceeded my expectations.  The chicken in the salad had no bones in it and they served refried beans and cheese with the fajitas (which is HUGE in China). 

After dinner Adam and I went to a new shop that had opened a while ago that has house wears and some imported food.  As we were on the way to the store we heard people covering rap songs…not just any people…black people!  The audience was mostly parents and grandparents with toddlers.  I think they were there mostly because they had never seen a black person before, meanwhile Adam and I enjoyed some music that we hadn’t heard in a while. 

We concluded our date night by checking out the rumor we heard about the Starbucks that is opening soon.  We figured it was too good to be true but there is a sign and a logo and Starbucks style furniture in the almost finished shop.

Date Night On The Road…HONG KONG

For the next few months we will be in and out of town but I want to keep our tradition going…I figure take a week off and then two and then it’s finished for good.  Today we went to Hong Kong, it was supposed to rain so I didn’t bring my nice camera and carried 2 umbrellas all day.  I guess it did the trick and it didn’t rain!  We went to the Peak which gives you a full view of Hong Kong. 

We went to Madam Tussauds Wax Museum, I have been before in different places but the cool thing about the Hong Kong one is Asian people don’t care about the people we care about, so there were no waiting in lines and no waiting to take pictures with exciting people like Madonna.

We stopped off at (lucky us) the Beer fest that we happened to run into.

We went to the book store and the food store (I now have all my baking supplies) and we went for Mexican food and a picture of Mango Margaritas. 

It was the first nice day I have spent in Hong Kong (weather wise) and it was Adam’s first full day in Hong Kong not suffering from Jetlag.

Date Night: Canceled for the first time

Date night started when we lived in a hotel and had to eat every meal out.  Eating out became an annoying part of our routine.  It became something that would put us both in a bad mood.  A) There were only a few places that we knew how to tell the taxi and that had an English menu.  B) There were a lot of rainy cold days where we just didn’t want to try to find a cab or even leave the room.  C) It gets old after eating out for lunch and dinner every day.  We decided date night would be Saturday nights and when we called it a date, went to a nice restaurant and got dressed up it gave us a whole different perspective on our routine.  We decided to do something new or just do something different on this night and it would be something we look forward to all week.  Since we started it there have been weekends where we have been out of town or Sat. nights where we went to parties with friends but this is the first time we have had to sit down and decide if we were OK to cancel it (per our agreement…plans cannot be made on date night without a discussion).  Adam was invited to the Guangdong games as one of two representatives from Cree as guests of the local government.  He is (as I type this) having dinner at a banquet hall at the Kande hotel, and will we heading to the opening ceremony in police escorted shuttles to the brand new stadium built for the games.  Without hesitation I said GO!

Date Night...BACK ON!

We went to Sushi for dinner.  BORING!  We decided we needed something else to do other then watch movies or walk around malls.  We bought the Game of Life!  The game is in Chinese and in English and it is something we can hold onto forever as a memory.  Oh and I won!

We Are Gonna Like It Here

Today we went to the city center (downtown) and just hung out.  We went through Digital Street and the Women’s Mall (both are really thin malls that have small 12x12 stores.  We found another DVD store, we had lunch at KFC (it’s better than in the US), we had frozen drinks at a coffee shop, bought our first bag of Chinese Tea, hung out by the river, and took a taxi to the Jusco to buy some food to snack on in the hotel and to have dinner. 

We talked about all the things that we love about China.  We love that you can eat a full meal (like our steak dinner last night) and not feel like you have to lie down because you ate too much.  The portions are just right.  We love that the shops are organized by what you need and what you like (not random like in department stores).  We love that you can get fresh fruit on the side of the road daily.  We love that you can hop in a cab to do anything and spend only $1 – $2 on cabs.  We love that you can eat lunch and dinner shop, have snacks and spend less than 300 RMB total (2 DVD’s, 3 cab rides, 1 fake Coach wallet, 1 bag of tea, 2 lunches, 2 frozen drinks, 2 dinners, 2 bags of chips, 2 bottles of soda, 1 (1/2) loaf of bread, 3 random snacks to try, 1 bag of candy) which ends up being less than $50 US.

I took lots of pictures so be sure to check them out!

Our New Plan...Every Sat. Night = Date Night

I know it seems strange to have a scheduled date night when you have no children and you eat dinner and lunch out every single day but let me explain.  Our daily where should we eat out routine is getting old and I think we have eaten at just about every restaurant that we can get to ourselves.  I can’t wait for the day where if we feel like it we can just stay home and take it easy.  I know…poor us…we can’t cook dinner and we eat out every meal for less than $20 US. 
We decided we needed to have a night out that we would look forward to and a night where we would do something different then our usual dinner and browse around the shops.  Like last week our movie was a little adventure.
This week we decided to have dinner at a nice Steak House in town, Super Steak.  We got a bottle of wine, an appetizer (sweet potato tempura), we each got a steak (Adam got a Steak and Cod dinner) and dessert (chocolate Molten Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream).  Our meal cost over 400 RMB (about $60 US).  Then we went to try out the bar that the head mistress at the TSL school suggested.  (See “It’s A God Thing”).  We made it by having the cab take us to the TSL school and walked.  It was pretty cool and there were lots of other bars on the same street.  We didn’t stay too long, but Adam wanted to find a cool place to take the Cree guys when they came here to help with the start up.  We went into both the English Pub and the Relax Bar (both had foreigners).

American Date Night in China

Where do you go on a date night when you live in Huizhou?   That’s right folks, Wal-Mart!  Like I said the Wal-Mart mall is HUGE!  It has tons of restaurants and a movie theater.  We went to see Sherlock Holmes.  We decided it would either be a cool new find or a funny story depending on what the movie was like.  Tickets cost about $8 US so not much different than in the US.  We memorized the Characters on the Movie Poster and matched them to the Characters on the movie schedule.  The movie started at 6:40 so we went at 6:20 because we knew buying tickets would be difficult and we wanted to beat the rush.  We bought our tickets and apparently we bought ourselves a VIP card (we have done that at a few places where things end up being about 2 RMB more than we thought…I guess they must think we are important…or they think they can charge us more).  We show our tickets (which have assigned seats) to the woman at the counter and she sends us to the waiting room.  Thinking the movie must start at 6:40 we tried 2 more times to get in before the lady actually let us through at 6:40!  We found our row and our seats (which was interesting because the only things we can read on the ticket are the numbers…and there were a lot of numbers followed by characters) fairly quickly and the movie started 5 min. after we were seated.  I kind of liked this organization.

The movie theater was very clean, no sticky floors, no wrappers or paper, no spilled popcorn and the seats were VERY comfortable.  Just when we started to think that going to a movie in China was much better than in the US the cell phones started going off, the people started talking and the children (yes there were children of all ages in the movie theater) started playing and crying.  I guess since the movie was in English and no one could understand the words they didn’t bother listen. 

Since earlier today we had some interesting breakfast and lunch ordering problems (I mean how many times can you accidently order a bowl of ice and a waffle).  We topped off our very American date by eating dinner at Papa Johns.