Doodle Acres

This morning I followed my usual routine of devotions, breakfast, and a walk.  Not to be deterred by the possibility of rain, I headed out for my walk inspite of the threatening skies.  I hadn’t walked for long before I started to see the rain making its presence known on my glass.  I decided to persist and had made it through about 20 minutes of my walk on my usual route when the thunder and lightening commenced.  About 5 minutes later, my hero pulled up in his truck to bring his well watered sweetie home safely.  My sweet husband was truly my knight in shining armor saving me (the damsel in distress) from the thunderstorm dragon.  Isn’t he sweet?  I AM truly blessed!!!

Picture courteousy of Nightfire Graphics and Alan Ayers

I happened upon Restaurant.com as I was browsing the internet just before Christmas.  The site offers gift certificates for local restaurants at significantly reduced prices.  As my husband and I usually go out to dinner once a week for “date night”, I decided to give it a try.  I bought a $25 gift certificate for $10 to a local burger joint (like an Applebees or TGIFridays).  In order to use the gift certificate, we were required to spend $35.  Our usual bill at this type of restaurant is usually about $35 plus tax and tip; so I figured that this would be a bargain ($10 for the gift certificate and $10 for the difference between the $35 tab and the $25 g.c. plus tax and tip).  

It worked out even better than expected.  The prices at this restaurant were a bit lower than Applebees so we even bought an order of 10 Buffalo wings to go (which the children enjoyed for lunch the next day in addition to the 1/2  of a hamburger I couldn’t finish and a bit of leftover pasta) to bring our tab up to $35.  The service wasn’t quite as fast as Applebees but this actually suited us just fine as the main purpose of our “date night” is to reconnect through uninterrupted conversation; but the food was just as tasty!!!

Note to all my frugal friends: We pay cash from our weekly allowance for our date night dinners.  We usually each pull $20ish dollars from our wallets to split the bill - very romantic, isn’t it?  But those ugly credit card charges would definitely be very unromantic!!!