A Real Date...

For Valentine's Day, I told David I wanted to surprise him and take him on a real date. Instead of celebrating yesterday, we celebrated today. Jessamyn volunteered to watch Daisy for 5.5 long hours (Daisy was a handful) and David and I enjoyed a night to ourselves.

We first went to dinner at Luigi's, a great little Italian restaurant in Roanoke. We had never been to it, and it was recommended by my coworker Peggy. We loved the food and had a great time. We got bruschetta as an appetizer:
David got a filet with stuffed shrimp:And I got the lasagna: We had fun taking pics of each other (it was very dimly lit so the pics aren't great)
We topped dinner off with a fantastic homemade carrot cake for dessert. After dinner, I surprised David with tickets to the Roanoke Symphony and Orchestra. We enjoyed a fantastic performance of Beethoven in the first half (Symphony No. 6 , F Major "Pastorale") and after intermission
Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor. That part featured a guest pianist. The concert lasted several hours and we left between the first and second encores for the guest pianist. He was great, but we had to get home to Daisy.

Thanks to Jessamyn and JD for watching Daisy and allowing us to have a great night out! She cried most of the night for them and didn't make their jobs easy. They are true friends!

Two Holidays!!!

Today was an exciting day -- two holidays!

That's right -- not only is it Valentine's Day, but it also is Chinese New Year!

First, two pics from yesterday. Daisy has now learned how to ride on David's shoulders.Holding on wears her out...

Now onto the fun of today... after church, we went to a women's basketball game with Jeanette. David's coworker Pat got us some great tickets. Dongbo, Callie, Laura, and Mama & Papa Staats also came to the game and visited us in our seats. Here's a picture of us at the game from the Hokie sports website. We're right in the background between the two players!


Daisy asleep on Mama Staats at the end of the game.Daisy and Mommy wearing our pink in support of breast cancer awareness.


After the game, David gave me my Valentine's gift -- CREAM SODA! He got a new brand to try, and it was really good. We got a whole case of sodas, including root beer and ginger ale. Tasty!
Finally, we went to dinner with Dongbo, Callie and Annie to Charlie's Chinese in Christiansburg to celebrate Chinese New Year. Welcome Year of the Tiger. Goodbye Year of the Ox (Daisy's birth year). This was Daisy's first Chinese New Year! Fortunately, she got to celebrate it with some real Chinese food ordered in Chinese (by Dongbo, who can speak it well.)

Here are the actual Chinese people in our group: Dongbo (100%), David (50%) and Daisy (25%)Trying to give Daisy some rice...Yum, look at all our food!
What a great day!