Anniversary Shoes and GO USA!

Eric and I had us a nice lil anniversary date last night. He even made dinner reservations!  We're not extremely lovey-dovey people.  I tend to lean a little more toward it than him, but super mushy pet names are NOT my style.  I usually call him something ridiculous just to make him (and me laugh) and the one time he sent me a mushy text message, I called him to ask who took his phone and was messing with me.

Case in point: last year for our anniversary,  we went out for a nice dinner and instead of spending lots of $$ on gifts for each other, we went to Academy and bought a table and chair set for the pool...half-off!....romantic I know, but extremely practical because we needed it.  I am pretty sure that does not count as a traditional 1st anniversary "paper" gift, maybe if you count that it came in a cardboard box?  For our anniversary this year I wanted to at least try to get something that goes along with the traditional 2nd anniversary "cotton" gift, so I started scheming.  I needed something that could be considered "cotton" that was also practical so that we were not just getting each other something to have a present to give each other.  And then it hit me.....running shoes.  How's that for a little romance?  I needed new ones, he needed new ones, they have cotton in them (I think). Now we BOTH nice new running shoes which means happy feet! [Imagine me doing a happy dance now.]

After we purchased our shoes Mizunos (Wave Creations of course) for me and Brooks for him, we headed downtown for dinner at Central.

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This was by far one of the swankiest places I have ever eaten. Unfortunately I did not come home after work so I didn't have a chance to grab my camera, thus no pics of the place.  But it was very hipster (in a good way).  It had the coolest wine storage wall.  It was probably 20 feet long and 30 feet high with holes all over it; half of which had wine bottles sticking out of them.  My other favorite part was that it was an open kitchen so you could literally watch the chefs prepare all of the food.  Very cool and the food was fabulous!  We started out with crispy calimari: sweet and spicy with wasabi aioli.  It was sooooo good. For dinner Eric had a wood-grilled rib-eye with smashed potatoes, yellow wax beans, and chimchurri.  I had wood-fired gulf grouper with gnocci, ratatouille in a tomato herb fondue. Our waiter told us that since they get all of their ingredients locally, their menu is constantly changing.  I thought that was pretty cool.  Eric decided that he liked the way they served the water.  They brought you a chilled wine bottle filled with water and set it on your table and would come by to fill your water glass up from time to time.

My dinner.  The cell phone pic does NOT do it justice. 

We EVEN made it home in time to watch some Olympics!  I recorded it just in case, and it worked out perfectly so Eric could get a run in (he could not wait to try his new shoes) and I was able to take the pups on a walk. After we were through we sat down to watch some of the Olympics. It serisouly cracks me up how every night Eric says he is NOT going to watch Olympics on tv and every night we are both glued to the tv watching whatever event is on.  He will even yell at the tv during the swim races.  It CRACKS me up.  We stayed up to watch the entire primetime coverage and watch the US Woman's Gymnastics Team WIN GOLD!  I was bawling by the medal ceremony.

I love love love the pure excitement and joy on their faces.  And be honest what little girl has never dreamed of being a Gold Medal Winning Gymnast at the Olympics.  I only took one gymnastics class my entire life (I was too tall....when you are 5 years old and you are too tall there is no hope for you in gymnastics) and I would jump around my parents' house on the balance beam that I taped on the floor (yep I did that).

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GO U-S-A!

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