New Musings from the Car & Two Weeks to Ethiopia...

Eight years ago (almost exactly), Wes and I started dating.  On our first big date, we took a day trip to Cincinnati (about hour and a half away).  We went to a bookstore downtown, sat down on the floor, and read books.  I felt totally comfortable doing this.  Wes felt weird because people had to squeeze by us.  I thought it was sweet and intimate.  After that, we went to a little Build-A-Bear store, and got a little moose who we named, Wendell Eugene.  It was a fantastic first date.

Today, eight years later, we had our alarms set for 5:30am.  Reason?  We had to drive an hour and a half to Cincinnati to see if they would let us walk-in for a fingerprint appointment.  You see, our prints expire in March, and while we hope we'll be back in the States by then, we can't be sure, so we had to get them updated. I spent an hour on the phone with USCIS yesterday trying to get them scheduled before we leave on January 13th (they gave us an appointment for January 20th....yeah, a little late).  Well, we didn't get much help, so we decided to take a chance, and hope that the staff at the Application Support Center would squeeze us in without an appointment.  To make a long story short, we walked in at 8am this morning, and the staff in Cincinnati were AWEsome!  They were so kind and helpful, and very understanding.  They took our prints, and at about 8:40am we were done.  We breathed several huge sighs of relief, got in our car, and decided to take the day and kind of recreate our first date, and then add on a couple of new things.

First we walked along the riverbank out in the cold winter morning.  This was our view.

Then we went and saw the new Chronicles of Narnia movie (which was awesome!  wes and i were both crying in the end), after which we wandered into this weird store with all kinds of medieval swords and garb, including Harry Potter attire.  So of course I had to sport the Gryffindor cloak.  (Thank goodness the sorting hat didn't put me in Slytherin!)

After the sword store, we went and had lunch at fairly crappy Irish Pub.  We are always tempted by any kind of cool pub, but this one was part of a chain.  We should have known better.  From the crappy pub, we headed over to Rainbow Hugs.  Isn't that the most ridiculous store name?!  We think so.  It made us laugh each time we said it, but basically it is just like a Build A Bear workshop.  Wes got the horse and name him Chester the Chestnut Horse.  I got the fox and named him Mr. Fox.  We are so original.  These two little guys will go to Alex and Eliana.

From Rainbow Hugs we went to Barnes & Noble and had a delicious peppermint mocha while reading relationship questions from a really weird relationship book.  Wes decided to journal the events of the day.

And after Barnes & Noble, we stopped by the GAP outlet, bought a few things, and then headed home, where we sat and chatted in the babies' room for about an hour.  From there we headed over to Olive Garden where they had a massive wait, so we decided to utilize our free time by hopping over to the mall to get some hair product for our twins.  The people at Sephora are seriously great!  Of course, as you saw in the video (if you actually made it that far into the video), we bought something.  From there we headed back over to Olive Garden, had a delicious meal of Calimari, Lasagna, Chicken Parmesan, and Salad.

It was truly a lovely day.  I can't express to you how much I love this man, but I seriously do.  He has been an amazing husband and I can't wait to see him as a father.  He will be amazing at that to.  I love you, Wesley!

And finally, I leave you with a couple of pics of our little ones that were taken on Christmas Eve.  Of course, I can't show their complete pictures yet because we haven't passed court, but hopefully in about 2 1/2 weeks, we will debut their pictures here on the blog.  I can't wait!

Alexander in his newest overalls!

Eliana's beautiful eyes, and cute curly hair.

Oh, and here is the latest "Musings from the Car"!  Come on now....you know you've missed our musings.  :)  It is six minutes long, so if you watch it all the way through, I will be impressed.