A couple weekend ago we cashed in our Christmas gift from Jessie & Chris in the form of our "What I Love About You" date night.
Jessie & Chris planned everything for us and we were not disappointed- in fact we were blown away with their creativity and generosity (as we usually are!) All Mike & I had to do was give them the date and come prepared with our questionnaire about "What I Love About You" for each other (a series of questions we had to answer about memories, thoughts, etc.)
We happened to also have a gift certificate to The Sheraton we needed to use so we made an entire night of it and were quite excited to have a night out back on our old stomping grounds of downtown Iowa City.
J&C had prepared an itinerary for us along with several envelopes we weren't to open until certain points in the night. Our first assignment was to head to Prairie Lights Bookstore for a sort of scavenger hunt but first we stopped for a drink in the Ped-Mall
of course.
Our mission at the bookstore was to secretly browse the store away from the other person and find something that the other could put on their desk at work that would remind them of the other. So off we went as we raced around trying to avoid the other person and laughing as we saw each other stumped and scrambling through the store. We both ended up finding a card for each other. Can you guess whose is whose?
After completing the mission and meeting up again we enjoyed a relaxing glass of wine as we explained our choices for the other.
The next part of our itinerary told us to head to Orchard Green Restaurant for dinner so we enjoyed a nice walk through downtown Iowa City on our way there. We had the most amazing dinner (huge steaks of course) and wine and during dinner we read what we had written.
The questions we answered were: I really knew you loved me when...I really knew I loved you when...This is what I remember about you on our wedding day...This is a memory that only we share...I was so proud of you when...This is one of my favorite adventures or things we did together...I am a better person because you taught or showed me...
Each of us were pretty touched by what the other had written and a few water babies may have spilled on my ribeye :)
After dinner we moseyed to The Sanctuary to peruse their amazing list of beers and J&C had another fun list of questions & would you rather's for us to laugh over.
We then hit up a few more places downtown and wondered how we used to do it not so many years ago....
In the morning our last surprise from J&C arrived at 9am with knock on the door- mimosas and a beautiful and delicious breakfast! I couldn't believe it- it was absolutely perfect and we can't thank J&C enough for the thought they put into this gift and for their awesome generosity.
We love you guys so much and thank you for helping us remember why we love each other, too!
This year I was in charge of planning a family reunion with a few other family members so I went old-school reverting back to the days of the Kuhl picnic pot-lucks we used to have at Scott Co. Park. We almost had the whole family show and it was a great day of food, games, discussions & pie/dessert contest of course. My peach and blueberry pie, though delicious, did not quite earn the title of winner- but I was in close running for presentation at least! We even made time for churning homemade ice cream for Jessie's b-day, an annual tradition and Uncle Bill led a nice Sunday morning devotion.
We celebrated Jessie's 30th b-day in style in a literal pyramid of a house right off the shores of Clear Lake. We boated and swam (despite the high levels of bacteria warnings) and danced the night away- it was so much fun!
