Last weekend Micah and I had the best time. But we went into the weekend with no plans whatsoever... Then, one after another, sweet and simple plans unfolded before us and we got to spend so much quality time together and with lots of friends.   On Thursday night, I was supposed to meet girlfriends for dinner in Old Town Scottsdale. When one friend couldn't make it, the evening somehow turned into a last-minute double date night with our good friends the Edgars and their darling almost-one-year-old, Claudia. We ventured to Citizen Public House in Old Town for dinner. I had gluten-free chicken and waffles. I didn't think I liked GF foods {simply in rebellion against my mom's crazy eating rules}, but I must admit my meal was pretty darn tasty. Friday rolled around and we had nothing on our agenda after work, so when my dear friend, Holly, texted me in the afternoon to see if we could get together for dinner with our husbands, I took her up on the offer instantly. I happen to LOVE impromptu plans. We picked a fun restaurant called Bandera that none of us had tried and we met up for a late dinner. Our meal included skillet cornbread as an appetizer, amazing entrees, and BOTH desserts on the menu. I should also mention that it included TONS of laughter and some impressive persuasion from Micah and me to convince Holly and Randy to have a baby ASAP. I think it worked... ;) Saturday. Once again, nothing on the agenda. Is anyone else like us? We'll go for about a month or so with crazy, packed weekends and then randomly hit a lull where we have nothing planned for a week or two. We were in our lull for sure, and now we don't have a free weekend in sight! Anyway... we bummed around the house all morning. I worked on school a little bit. Micah lounged around. We wanted to go look at houses {to buy!} in the afternoon, but our Internet went down and we couldn't look up the addresses we wanted to see. So when my friend, Vanessa, texted me about an event called Feast on the Street that was happening downtown that evening, we decided we would meet them there. The event was basically a huge food truck party with a 1/2 mile long community table stretching down a few city blocks. We met up with Vanessa, her husband Steve, and their cute baby boy to grab dinner. Dinner turned into wine and chatting all night long at their house so they could get little Henry to bed. A bunch of their other friends came over too and we stayed up talking and laughing until midnight. Such a fun group, even though I had to forgo the wine!   Finally, it was Sunday. Our Sabbath. I should write more about it later, but Micah and I take the gift of Sabbath rest very seriously. We have talked and prayed so much about what we want our Sundays to look like and have reflected on what activities are the most restful for us. Sometimes we spend time apart {because restful for me often looks like blogging and reading Real Simple pool side, while Micah's version of restful sometimes involves a 13 mile run - gag me!}, but we also try to spend a lot of time together. After our late night with friends, we slept in and went to the later service at our church. I left feeling more and more content with the new church God has brought us to. I should also mention that we were actually like two minutes early to church, because I convinced Micah I would get ready extra fast if he would take me to LGO for my favorite coffee before the service. Win-win! After church we drove around our favorite neighborhood and scoped out houses for sale. Somehow, around three o'clock in the afternoon, we wound up back at LGO for a late lunch. We had grown hungry during our house hunting adventure. We went home so happy and full. Not just full of food, but full of quality time spent together and with good friends for so many days in a row. We felt overwhelmed and thankful for God's goodness in our lives.     I should also mention the title of this post. Micah and I don't eat out often. We pretty much never eat out during the week and try to limit our dining out to one time per weekend. Accordingly, we only have $40 a week in our budget for eating at restaurants. Sure, every now and then we splurge and eat out twice or spend extra on a fancy meal for a birthday or anniversary, but most weeks we stick to our $40. However, our budget was completely destroyed by day two of our fun four-day weekend. By the time we got around to our late lunch on Sunday, we decided to add up how much we had spent eating out EVERY SINGLE day since Thursday. The total was $155. But you know what? We decided it was worth it. Clearly, it's not a pattern we hope to repeat in the near future, but it was totally worth the money for the amazing weekend we had in exchange.     These are the days and nights we are learning to cherish as we head into parenthood, when our schedules are no longer our own and it gets much harder to be spontaneous. Don't get me wrong. Micah and I will always carve out time to get away and go on dates, but we might not get to arrange our plans on a whim the way we did during this precious and fun weekend. We want to savor the moments before our $155 goes toward babysitters and our schedule has to work around nap time. I'm sure the next season will be even more sweet, but I'm trying to savor where God has us right now. ... Read more