Les Mis, Dates, and Freak Outs

We saw Les Mis in Kansas City a couple weeks ago! It was (obviously) completely phenomenal and we were just absolutely entranced.

We had a sliiiiight hiccup right before we were leaving for the 3-hour drive to KC...Max realized that my ticket (which he had purchased separately for my birthday) was for Saturday night, but his and my mom's tickets were for the following Sunday night! We all stared in horror at each other and then scrambled to rectify the situation...my mom called the box office, who were unhelpful and brief, so Max contacted TicketMaster, who put him on hold for half an hour. During that half hour, we rehearsed a script and I took a turn calling the box office, which again was extremely unhelpful and unforgiving. Eventually Max got hold of a real person and, with great shouts of joy and relief, they worked it out to change their tickets to that night so we could all go together. Phew!

waiting...waiting...

I sang myself hoarse in the middle seat to Dear Evan Hansen, Wicked, and of course, Les Mis

I lol'd, but didn't point this out to Max since
it was still too fresh (but srsly, check your dates!)

my seat was probably five rows in front of this row, the very furthest right seat. for being
so far over, I felt like it was a really good seat! 

everywhere was PACKED for dinner, we couldn't get any reservations, so we walked into a good-smelling restaurant called Rye and snuck over to sit at the bar, where you don't need a reservation, muahahhaa. The food was good, albeit overpriced. We were just relieved to find a place to eat!

it being a steak place, I naturally partook of the side dishes rather than the entree
(mac n cheese and some of my mom's roasted parmesan potatoes)

It was such a fun outing! I was hard core drool, head dropping, nodding off on the way home though...we didn't get home til almost 2 in the morning! My bed time is like 9pm! Thanks Max for the tickets and Mom for driving!

Austin has been enjoying his Honest Abe's gift cards, all $600 worth! He has deigned to let me accompany him : ) For a date last week we got burgers and then went to a bookstore downtown that we hadn't noticed til recently. It's called Francie and Finch and it is so cute! Expensive, of course, but just what you want it to be otherwise. I will definitely be back! 

Austin hates the fries but I loooove them

aren't the bright windows merry!?

Erika sent us this picture while we were on our date (p.s. thanks for babysitting!):

This past week has also brought a new level of Stockton freak out. We can't figure out why he's been so sensitive, but one small thing will get him so worked up that he cries dramatically for soooo long and has a really hard time coming down from it and relaxing. Basically the only thing that works is to wrap him in his beloved purple blankie and snuggle with him until he can calm down enough to move forward. This doesn't work, of course, when I'm at the store or somewhere without purple blankie, but luckily I did have it during a freakout at the park, so he was able to relax. I thought the image of his cozy purple "nest" left intact on the bench when he was ready to emerge was so funny.

 super mad because we went to a park that he normally loves but I guess wasn't expecting? hard to know

abandoned nest

Also, we saw the newest Star Wars this week! Austin went with his whole office to the 6:30 am showing opening day, and he ordered me to see it the next day so we could talk about it haha. It was great!

it was delightful having 3 whole hours in the
middle of the day to myself! (and Rey)

 Another date we went on recently was at Austin's classmate's house. She's from India and made their whole cohort this AMAZING authentic Indian food! I only took this one picture but she made tons of delicious, incredible, mouth-watering food. I was only sad that I didn't have a bigger stomach to stuff more of it in, it was sooo yummy. Thank you, Ananda and family, for introducing me to Indian food and instilling in me a lifelong love of it!

We had friends over one night and decided we needed a treat to go with our chatting, so Emily and I went to HyVee to see what we could find and came home with this ENORMOUS chocolate box. It was only $10! for 54 pieces of chocolate!

I don't think you can properly tell how huge it
is, but it took up like half the length of our table

 We got to babysit Camille one night and the kids were obsessed with her. Aaaand this was my view on a slow night at Tico's.