It could have been wrapped in a beautiful box and tied with a pretty pink ribbon.  I would have gushed over it's loveliness and exclaimed over the thoughtfulness - with hand over heart - before selfishly tearing through the carefully scotch-taped masterpiece to find within exactly what I was (fingers crossed) wishing for.  Two nights.  God bless Salina Rusnak!

She accepted my three children qualm-free and graciously with little more than a "does Noa like a song before bed?"  A foolish grin danced on my face as we pulled from the driveway after kisses and waves and dear Erika's advice to pick up a can of whipped cream to sweeten our child-free 41 hours which stretched before us like a beautiful highway of possibility.

That highway (namely 6 then 4) took us to the lights at Canadian Tire where we followed the "Come Star Gaze With Us" sign to the Drive-In.  We don't remember the last time we came without a back seat full of kids and potato chips and drinking boxes but it may fall in the era of the Dodge Omni: the coolest ugly car ever!  It was white with black racing stripes and we would back it into our drive-in parking spot, hatch full of pillows from the Value Village sectional in Scott's first apartment.

We laugh about how nothing has changed: how the little kids still play in the shadows cast by the spot lights in front of the screen, how the bathroom stall doors are so inappropriately high and how the rotating cloth towel dispenser is always wet and probably the same towel that was there when I was fourteen and we'd be better off to dry our hands on our jeans and how we can't believe that parents would bring their six-year-olds to watch Eclipse.  I try to catch Scott up on the series without giving anything away and am able to condense it down to this:  Bella is a girl.  Bella loves Edward.  Edward is a vampire.  Edward loves Bella.  Jacob is a werewolf.  Jacob loves Bella.  Bella is horny.  It was a good movie.  Not spectacular.  The book is better.  Most people left then.  We stayed for the second movie along with half a dozen other cars.  Splice.  We should not have stayed.  I felt like I needed a shower when it was over.  It was not a good movie.  Do not go see it.

We got to bed at 3 am.  It was okay.  There would be no kids crawling on me at 7 o'clock.  I slept until 11 (ah, sweet bliss!).  We went out for breakfast at lunch time (ah, sweet bliss!).  We left for my cousins wedding, I in a Suzy Shier dress with crinoline and shoes that gave me toe cleavage and blisters and he in a white button down shirt, dark pin-stripped pants and canvas airwalks (the combination of which I found extremely sexy).  We thought ourselves quite the dapper pair and enjoyed our second night of freedom laughing to the point of tears over my brother-in-laws romancing techniques - all of which involved farting.  (He seems to think a perfectly timed dutch oven should make her randy...sadly, it does not.)  Sunday morning I slept until 11:34.  Sweet, sweet, bliss!

Two nights.  It was heaven.  No whipped cream but he didn't get his hand slapped away like in the Dodge Omni days.

And now the kids are back and it's chaos again.

But I kind of like that too.