10 Dates in 10 Days

Or, just as accurately known as "10 Pounds in 10 Days". :D James and I were blessed to celebrate our 10-year anniversary back in August 2011. We had originally planned to return to Hawaii where we get married, but when we started considering the logistics of having 1 and 3 year olds (do you take them on an 8-10 hour flight? do you leave them at home torturing grandparents for over a week?), we decided to modify our plans this time around. Besides, there will be plenty of future anniversaries to go back to the islands.

So, we concocted the plan to do "10 Dates in 10 Days" to celebrate our 10 years of married bliss. James and I each took turns choosing the agenda for the day, and we worked it out with grandparents and their school so that we would have a good portion of each day free to spend with one another.

Date 1: Peli-Peli
After dropping the kids off at James' parents house, we headed to James's first pick: Peli-Peli, a yummy African-inspired restaurant that was voted the most romantic restaurant in Houston in 2011.


Date 2: Star Wars and Mockingbird Bistro
I selected to visit the museum in Downtown Houston that was showing a Star Wars exhibit before doing an early dinner at Mockingbird Bistro where James had an AMAZING kobe burger that we still talk about to this day.



Date 3: Villa Capri
Ah, Villa Capri -- the location of our controversial first date. James "tricked" me into a lunch date on my very last day of my internship at Lockheed Martin, and this is where we ended up for some yummy seafood pasta that the owner recommended. This time, I went quite willingly to James' pick of date locales.


Date 4: Captain Kidd
I thought it would be fun to head out on the water, so my next date was to ride a pirate boat on the waters of Kemah. We picked up some subs from Neptunes beforehand and brought aboard my coveted bottle of Carnival wine that I had been saving for just such an occasion.



Date 5: A Bye ...
Back in Dallas, we had planned to go out for dinner and drop the kids off at Kiddin' Around ... only to discover/remember that Kiddin' Around isn't open on Sundays. Whoops. Instead, we took the kids to Willow Bend mall to play and got burgers at Fuddruckers.


Date 6: Hawaiian Food
With the kids in school, I thought it would be bonding to do a project together. I've been wanting to hang some frames on the wall in our living room for months now, and I figured a week off would be the time to do it. It took us a little bit more than just the one week, but it looks fantastic. In our Hawaiian clothes, we went to lunch was at the Kona Grill where we had Hawaiin-inspired food and spent a good amount of time trying to remember what we did the previous 9 years for our anniversaries. Dinner including the kids at L&L -- a Hawaiin fast-food joint. We also went and bought our blender (you may laugh, but those of you with kids, when was the last time you appliance shopping together?), exchanged gifts, and watched our wedding slideshow that I had burned from VCR to DVD (and it only took 10 years to get around to doing that!).






Date 7: Movie Date
After working on the pictures some more that morning, James chose this to be our "annual" movie day. We had some lunch at Chuy's, played some games at D&B, and watched "Crazy, Stupid, Love" which we both really enjoyed.



Date 8: Top Golf and Seafood
I had heard about Top Golf from some friends and really wanted to try it out. James and I had taken golf lessons together eons ago but never really pursued it since. We were both really happy with Top Golf, and James has been back a number of times since. We were also supposed to go to Boiling Crab afterwards but discovered that it was closed all week for remodeling, so we ended up at Big Shucks instead.



Date 9: Grapevine Wine
James' last date was a wine crawl through downtown Grapevine. We started with brunch at the Old West Cafe to put some food in our bellies before we saturated it with wine.



Date 10: Four Seasons
My last date was sort of a big one because I managed to stretch it out over the weekend. We started by going to In N Out in Frisco before heading to the Four Seasons in Las Colinas for massages and mani/pedis (in a manly way for James, of course). Then we picked up the kids from school to bring them back to the hotel where they had childcare for dinner while we dined alone at the Cafe on the Green to wrap up our "10 dates". The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing with the whole family at the hotel and enjoying being together.



So, that's it! 10 days of fun, 10 extra pounds to lose, and a lifetime of memories gained. If you'd like to see some of the pictures from our adventures, you can check them out in our "10 Dates in 10 Days" album.