Perkins Shield Date / Cousin Weekend

David and I are so grateful for the good friends that we are surrounded by. The Perkins and Shields were two of the earliest friends that we made in our neighborhood and they have been such good friends to us over many years of great things and hard times. When our ward got split and the Shields were in the other boundaries we were so sad, but I think that set us up for being able to maintain our friendship after they moved to Spanish Fork. These are the kind of people that like you for who you are and who leave you feeling better after you spend time with them. That's a true gift. 

We've started just putting a quarterly get together on our calendar. Before we end our evening, everyone pulls out their phones and we pick a date three months away to make sure we see each other soon. Three months seems lke a long time between - but honestly, there isn't anyone else that we see more regularly and having it on our calendar makes sure it happens. I love this about these people. I feel like they prioritize spending time with us because they like us and we like them, too.  Usually our gatherings are just dinner at someone's house and then we chat while the kids play in the basement, but this month we deided to do a full date night together. We went to dinner at a new hamburger place Backdoor BRGR, then moved to the main level of the building to try our hand at hatchet throwing, which seems to be a replacement for taking your date bowling, ha. We had a good time, although I don't know that David and I would go back on our own. But we sure loved hanging out with these people. 

I wasn't feeling my very best, so we ended up coming home early and not doing dessert with the group. Jenna was watching our kids for "cousin weekend" and so we came home and put on the BBC Version of Pride and Prejudice and binge watched the entire thing. (I'm sure i've written about this elsewhere, but this year we picked books for each other to read and watch the movie. David read Pride and Prejudice and we have been working through all of the movie adaptations of that, which has been fun. I am reading the LOTR series. I've read the Hobbit and the first book, and we've watched the movie - but i'm still working my way through the second book.) One of my favorite things about this evening was that we spent a good four hours watching TV downstairs on the couch, which is very abnormal for us at this stage of our lives. We finished P&P and were heading up to bed, but then we got talking about the book series that I'm listening to right now "Lockwood and Co." - I had heard that there was a Netflix series about the books and I've been loving them so much that I thought I wanted to watch that series, too. Feeling irresponsible, we grabbed the laptop raced to the bed and found the series to start watching. It was a little scary, and felt spontaneous and a little irresonsible, and it was just so fun. I love living this life with David and I'm grateful for weekends like this when we get to step out of the daily routine, do some fun things, and connect with each other.