Date Night!

So I had a delightful experience recently.  I discovered that my kids–both of them!–had been committed to a sleep over on a Friday night.

 Like, this Friday.  

I can’t quite believe this slipped my mind.  I mean, Mr. Sey and I have the occasional date night but do you people have any idea what a sitter costs these days?  Suffice it to say, it’s a lot.  So much, in fact, that rather than the more traditional “movie and dinner” date, we often opt for what we call “Movie Dinner.”  This is when still go to the movies, but we eat popcorn for dinner.  In addition to cutting our date night costs way down, it also knocks a good hour or two off our babysitting bill. 

(Note that our priorities are firmly in order: Good food vs. good story?  Good story, no question.  And the fact that this isn’t even a point of contention between us is probably the reason we’re so happily married.)

So how I managed to forget that we were getting a date night minus the babysitter is beyond me, but there you have it.  I was suddenly in the enviable position of having twice the usual budget for a date night, & absolutely no need to be home by midnight.  

Did we promptly book a table for two at the fanciest French restaurant in town?  Did we zip over to Fandango to buy our movie tickets? 

We did not.  We went out for pizza & beer.

To be fair, it was designer pizza & craft beer.  And in the city, too!   Then we went to Lee’s Liquor Lounge–(Why, yes, taxidermy does feature prominently in the decor.  However did you know?)–where we danced to those local kings of rockabilly swing, Trailer Trash.  (This, by the way, is an almost exact replica of our very first date.  We try to tell the story to our children without using any proper nouns.) 

 And we were not home by midnight.  It was lovely.

So how about you?  If you had an unexpected night off with your sweetie–and twice the usual budget for such things–what would you do?