Date Nights

That's right...nights is plural!  Jared and I have been on a couple of dates during the last couple of weeks!
Lets start with our "Zoorific Evening"!  I entered a Decatur Park District contest called #selfiesafari.  You had to take a selfie while at the zoo and post it to Instagram or FB with that hashtag.  During the timeframe of the contest, the kids and I went to the zoo...just the 3 of us (see Last Day of Summer blog post).  The winner got 2 tickets to the zoos fundraiser event, "A Zoorific Evening" AND a family pass to the zoo for the next year.  If you can't see this coming...I WON!!  I never win anything!  Here's the Instagram photo that won it for me ;).

So, the day I found out we had tickets to the Zoorific Evening, happened to be the same day of the event.  I made a couple calls and Roger and Sandra came to babysit the kids for us and we all had a great night!
Basically the evening was an adults only trip to the zoo.  There were food stations set up all throughout the zoo with lots of yummy food.  It was a circus theme, so they had circus acts throughout the zoo as well.  So much fun!  We got up close and personal with some of the animals and the zookeepers were all out and about answering questions and giving us the insider info on zoo happenings.  I loved it, and would consider buying tickets next year!

Feeding the camel! 

Petting the zebra...who really just wanted to bite us!

Fun night at the zoo

We got to see the 8 week old red panda.  So cute!!

Selfie with the wolf 

We even got a private ride on the carousel!

Date night #2= Cardinals game with Abby and Alex.
Friday night we met my parents to drop the kids off with them for the night and we headed down to St. Louis.  We went to the Cardinals- Cubs game with Abby and Alex and had a great time...even if the Cardinals didn't win this one.

35 weeks (+1 day)

Sisters enjoying some Friday night baseball!

My handsome date for the evening!

After the game, we decided donuts sounded good.  Abby had heard of Strange Donuts and we decided to drive a bit out of our way to check it out.  It has to be different (or strange, if you will) for a donut shop to be open at 11pm.  It was definitely worth the drive.  The guys went along begrudgingly, but in the end, agreed that it was well worth it ;)!  Especially after Jared bit into the Maple Bacon donut!

YUM!

Donuts after dark!

We stayed the night at Abby and Alex's house and my parents brought the kids over the next day for lunch at Dewey's.  It was a great start to our holiday weekend!  More on the rest of our weekend later!