While I’m a lot more comfortable leaving Phoebe and Enzo in someone else’s care than I was when it was just Enzo, Josh and I don’t really go out on dates all that often. We have a few babysitters (in the form of family), but schedules don’t always coincide so more often than not we just hang out as a family on the weekend.  Honestly? I’m okay with that. However, Josh and I have discovered that sometimes the easiest way to spend time alone is to just take a day off of work, drop the kids off at day care, and then do whatever the heck we want to. In February it ended up snowing on our day off, so after we went out to breakfast we went home, snuggled up with the cats, and watched ‘The Hobbit.’ Wild, right?

This month, though, we thought it would be fun to get out and go to a couple of breweries and hit up some antique stores, something we both enjoy as you never know what kinds of oddities you might stumble upon. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, and I wanted to try somewhere we hadn’t been before, so we went to The Freehouse, which also happened to sort of be on our way to Stillwater. What better way to start the day then with a beer tasting, right?

The food was also really, really good.  Mine was basically hash browns covered in eggs and cheese, and while that might sound boring, it was definitely not bland and I ate until I thought I would explode. The beer was also quite tasty, and we each found a combo that we enjoyed (out of 7 total).  I’m usually not a fan of really hoppy beers, but apparently my taste buds have been changing as those along with the stout were my favorites.

It was a little chilly and overcast, but we bundled up and walked around Stillwater anyway stopping in at just about every antique store that was open, or at least as many as we had time for.  I forgot just how big some of these stores are, and my wish list kept growing and growing at each one we went to.  There was one in particular that had the most amazing furniture and suddenly my daydreams of owning a small home near the beach turned into owning a castle on the moors of Scotland. One can dream, right?  Granted, each store also had its own share of nightmare inducing horrors such as one of the worst examples of taxidermy I’ve seen.

Those eyes will haunt me forever.

Eventually breakfast wore off, and we decided it was time to get more sustenance and libations. We hadn’t been to the Lift Bridge Brewery, so we headed over for one of their tastings and ordered pizza from a local place to deliver while we were there.  I wish I could remember the name of the pizza joint because they had the most amazing garlic bread knots.  Lift Bridge also had a fantastic stout, and after our tasting I tried out their root beer, which is equally awesome.

All in all, it was a day well spent, and now we’re just planning next month’s date.