Embarrassingly Old

Every year for Christmas, Santa gives me gift cards. Every year, I forget to use them and they start collecting dust. After about 3 years of having so many, my bestie and I figured we would make an entire double date night revolved around using gift cards. Seriously - SO worth the wait. After about 3 weeks straight of dealing with influenza, colds, and strep - it was time for a night out. Do you want to know what’s great? When your parents watch the kids for a few hours out. Do you want to know what’s even better? When your parents were planning to have them overnight and not just a few hours. I didn’t argue, I just ran out the door before my mom could change her mind.

We picked up my bestie and her husband and began our 40 minute trek towards the cities. Seems far for most people, but it's just down the street to us country folk. Our first gift card destination was The Porter House; a really nice steak house we used to go to pre-kids. Does anyone else ride split-up from their husbands in the car? Girls sit together and guys sit together? Tre and I always sit by each other, which means our conversations usually never include the guys. Eh, we’re okay with that. We talked about the latest bachelor buzz, crazy people, and clothes. Pretty sure the guys talked about food the entire ride. We arrived at the velvet walled restaurant and went to our giant booth where we felt like children. Runaway dad #1 (LD, Tressa's hubby) harassed our waitress as he usually does and ordered a specialty drink that got him nice and drunk while runaway dad #2 (Nick, my hubbs) ordered a steak that was twice the size of his head and sipped on his expensive scotch. Tressa and I found out right then that apparently our husbands were planning a surprise trip to California for our birthdays - WHAT.IN.THE.HECK. Now we have to go, right? It’s one of those things that you can’t say and not follow up on right? I’m a strong believer in that today. Delta, we’ll take 4 tickets directly to Napa Valley, pronto. They almost won Husbands of the Year, but came up just shy.

We got a little tipsy at dinner, which made our laughs a little too loud for the 'almost' country club we were in. I think the waitress was extremely happy that our time had come to leave. A whole bunch of 30 year old's acting about 16 #sorrynotsorry. Next up - a movie: Knives Out. It’s kind of our thing for double date nights - spend time at dinner talking and then shut the f up the rest of the night. One great thing about movie theaters now is that you can drink at them! It's been awhile, don't judge. The White Bear Lake theater is amazing and has a full bar these days! It sucked the guys in as soon as their foot touched the entryway, we didn’t trail too far behind. Ok, I didn't; Tressa is sober-cabbing these days. We don’t get out a ton obviously because the bartender couldn’t believe how excited we were at all of the upgrades to the theater that happened probably 10 years ago. We got crazy large cocktails and made our way to the concessions. Did you know …. They deliver your order to your seats. Legit - MIND BLOWN. Also humiliated for how mind blown we were, but whatev. We’re from a small town.

We couldn’t even make it to our seats because the guys got sucked into pinball. I would love to say I’m joking right now, but unfortunately I’m not. LD couldn’t stop playing the game because he kept winning and wouldn’t stop winning free games.

Tressa and I ditched the dorks and made our way to our seats. I barely made it without spilling my overflowing cup of 4 glasses of wine in one. Have you ever tried chugging Cabernet? It’s SO HARD. Not saying I didn’t do it, just saying it's not the easiest. The guys barely made it with the lights on and Tressa and I did what most mature 30yo would do, we ducked down and hid so they couldn't find us. Since there was a total of like 5 people in the entire theater and they all shared our row for some insane reason, it wasn’t hard. Does anyone else get the giggles when it’s really quiet in a theater? Ugh. So embarrassing - we did. One of us laughed and then we all did; it was contagious and we couldn’t control it. Everyone else was probably on their first dates and here we were: ancient and hysterically laughing.

The movie was good, but long. I would recommend going to see it if you find yourself with a sitter for a few hours. I would probably recommend a bar if you have a babysitter for the entire night, but to each their own. Ultimately, we had a kid-free night and instead of living it up completely and waking up with the worst hangovers from staying out until bar close, we went home and zonked. Definitely embarrassing and fun, which means it was a great night out with great friends. Total side note: a highlight of my night was finding out that I chose glow-in-the-dark nail polish at the salon. It was extremely exciting to see my nails glowing in the dark.

XOXO

Hells