Locks of Love

                  It has been a while since Matt and I have been out.  Life gets busy, and we always mean to go, but we never do.  Rome has a trail system downtown that I like to run on after work in the mornings.  I love being down by the river.  It is so peaceful.  Every time I run, I make a mental note that on our next date night, I want to get some iced coffee and walk along the river together. 

                I arranged for my parents my keep the kids last night, and Matt and I went out.  We tried a new Mexican restaurant in Rome called La Parilla.  It was excellent.  Yummy fish tacos, chunky guacamole prepared at the table, and their signature margarita that has a little orange liquor in it. 

                 I had won movie passes on the radio a few weeks ago and they expire at the end of the month, so we decided to see a movie.  There was really nothing playing that we wanted to see.  There never is.  Our taste in movies is so different that we rarely go see movies together.  To make my point, the last time we saw a movie together, we saw The Odd Life of Timothy Green, which came out in 2012.  And that was probably also from tickets I had won.  Between the movies Tammy and Deliver Us From Evil, we flipped a coin, and heads was Tammy.  It wasn’t great, but it entertained us to the point that it didn’t feel like a wasted two hours. 

               In between the meal and the movie, we had some time to kill and I had drank a margarita, so I asked Matt to take a walk with me.  And there was one other thing I wanted to do.  There is a footbridge in the park that was converted from a rail bridge a few years ago.  Several months ago, a couple placed locks on the bridge like they do on the Pont des Arts in Paris, and they posted a picture to Facebook.  The City quickly sent a worker to remove the locks.  More locks kept appearing and being removed, and finally the City decided to let the locks remain.   Matt and I ran to Home Depot for padlocks, engraved our initials on them with his pocketknife, locked them on the bridge together, and threw the keys into the river.  Oh the sweetness!  I’m sure he thought it was dumb, but it sure made me happy.  Now every time I run across the bridge, I'll see our locks along with the others.

                We walked along the river for a while, and then we went to the movie.  After the movie, we came home and shared a big bottle of wine while we watched four episodes of the Walking Dead.  It was a perfect evening.

Here's all it takes to make me happy:

Yummy!  This is not my actual food.  I don't do that in restaurants.  ;-)

Pont des Arts over the River Seine in Paris, France

The Robert Redden footbridge over the Oostanaula River in Rome, Georgia

Goodbye, Sweet Summerime

This summer has flown by like none I can ever remember.  I can’t believe we are almost to the end!  Here is a quick rundown of the fun we’ve had.

-          To celebrate the end of the school year, Matt and I took the kids to Lake Winnepesaukah in Chattanooga.  It is a great little family friendly amusement park.  It has the kind of rides I love most, the Tilt-a-Whirl, Spider, Scrambler… you know, all the rides that spin you around and make you feel drunk.  They remind me of going to the fair when I was a kid.  Bonnie, Will, Luke, and I rode together all day, but Rosemary went a different speed.  She was tall enough for almost everything, but she didn’t like anything but the kiddie coaster and the bumper cars.  I won some tickets from the radio station, so I am going to take the big three kids again on Wednesday while my mom takes Roey out to eat and to do some shopping.  
 

-          Matt went out of town with some buddies in mid-June.  There was a door in the kids’ bathroom between the vanity and the room with the toilet and tub that has never closed.  It bumped into the toilet because the toilet was installed too close to the door.  The last thing you do when you build a house is hang the doors, so by the time we discovered the problem, the plumbing was done and the tile floors were finished.  It would have required a lot of time and work to fix it, and we were just ready to move in.  So the non-closing door has remained.  While Matt was gone, we decided to take down the door and place bets on how long it would take him to realize it after he returned home.  Somehow that little sneaky project turned into a full-blown bathroom redo. They decided the fish theme was too babyish for them.  We painted the walls and bought a new shower curtain and rug, so now they have a more mature bathroom.  Obviously, Matt noticed pretty fast!
 

 

 -          The week of July 4^th, we had lots of family in town that we only get to see once a year.  We celebrated my Granny Ponder’s 88^th birthday at her house.  It was supposed to be at my parents’ house, but a spur-of-the-moment trip to Las Vegas left my mom with a horrible stomach virus, and she ended up missing all the festivities.  Still, it was wonderful seeing my cousins and their children.  There were also cousins on Matt’s side of the family in town later in the week, so we kept the party going.  On the evening of July 4^th, we went to a party at the home of some friends. We had a great time, and their lovely outdoor space inspired me to tackle my next home project, refinishing our deck.  I think I’ll do a separate post for that when it is complete.   It is going very slowly thanks to pop-up summer storms, but it will get done eventually.

-          And speaking of summer storms, we have gotten some beautiful produce from our garden this year.  We have never grown eggplant before, so we gave it a try.  One night, Matt made ratatouille.  I had heard of it, but I didn’t exactly know what it was.  It has eggplant, zucchini, onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, and mushrooms.  The only thing we had a buy was the mushrooms, and the meal was delicious!

 

 -          Bonnie is now a full-fledged teenager.  She had a boyfriend.  Now I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have a boyfriend.  She no longer talks to me.  She spends all her time in her room or with her head phones on.  I remember being a lot like that when I was her age, but up until now, Bonnie has always been very open with me.  I was kinda hoping that we would skip the brooding phase.  I just don’t know how to parent a teenager.  I feel lost.  In retrospect, I think changing diapers might have been the easy part of parenting.  :-(

That's all I've got.  I hope you enjoy the last sweet summer days!