happy Teach Your Friend How to Brew Day

Bet you didn't know that's what today is did you? National Teach your Friend How to Brew Day. Hope you're all celebrating appropriately.

I've been looking forward to this evening all week. Ryan got tickets to the hockey game tonight and I was excited to actually have a night out, just us. My parents are in town, which you may remember, is our only time to easily have a little date night. Moving to new cities doesn't make for a huge babysitter selection, and even when we find a good one, obviously that always tacks on another bill to a night on the town.

Well, my parents have already graciously watched our kids quite often this week. Monday night after putting the kids to bed, they sent Ryan and I out birthday shopping. Tuesday night they watched our kids and the Swinigan girls while Ryan and I went out to dinner with Kevin and Heather. That was fun. The past two Thursday nights they have watched the kids for three hours while Ryan and I attended a Love and Logic parenting seminar.

So while we've been plenty busy and I've had lots of little breaks from the kids, I was really looking forward to a fun night out with just my husband. He got these tickets awhile ago and originally we had even talked about getting a hotel in the city somewhere and making a whole night of it topped off without kids waking us at the break of dawn. Then Ryan decided he really needed to be home to watch the Duck's game tonight. It was true that Sawyer's birthday sort of sucked overnight in the city money out of my budget anyway, so okay.

Then I realized that what I thought was just us on a nice little "date" to see the Blues play, was really a party suite with other people from Ryan's work. So it's not just us, but there's free snacks, a couple of drinks, hanging out with people I don't know, okay.

Then Ryan starts talking like he's considering skipping the hockey game for the Duck game on tv which is so much more important. I wasn't thrilled with him taking away our only date option, you can record the game if it's so important to you thankyouverymuch.

Then I start thinking well, it might be fun to go have dinner, maybe even see a movie before or go down to the Galleria or something before the game just to hang out and do something fun while we have the chance. Ryan gets home this afternoon (after being gone for four hours at his boss's beer brewing thing) and we start talking about where to go for dinner. I'm trying to steer away from sports bars or any places with tv's, as I know he doesn't want to hear anything about the football game he's recording to watch later tonight. I innocently ask what time it is that the football game starts. His reply is "well, it starts at 5:45 so technically, if we stayed here for dinner, I could watch a good portion of it before we have to leave for the Blues game". I know he was joking. Half joking anyway. But oh not the right thing to say.

We are social people who love to hang out with our friends and our first instinct is usually if we're doing something fun, we invite others to join us. Since our kidless time is so much more limited now after all our moving about the country, I have made so many comments in the last few months about how nice it would be to have a date night, just us. I have said many times I much I was looking forward to my parents being here so it'd be easier to do something like that. It was Ryan's idea to go out with the Swinigans this week and he put all the effort into arranging our little evening out, and that was nice. It was really fun to go have dinner with them and relax without all of our kids, but at the same time, it's been a long time since we've had a date just us. I couldn't help but wish he'd put half that thought into just taking me out. And now, what I thought was going to be our turn for an actual night out, is slowly dwindling to what is feeling more and more like a bare minimum "have to go make an appearance in the Pfizer suite and hurry back home to watch the game" kind of outing, instead of an evening of my husband wanting to spend time with me.
I'm not happy.
I need a beer.

*ETA--
and he's wearing his Duck's jersey out.
I need a stiffer drink than a beer.