7 years.

last week sam and i celebrated our 7 year anniversary. sam had 2 little surprised planned for me. we don't usually do presents but he had secretly saved up some driving money (he gets paid for every mile he drives for starbucks, and i have never seen this money and i always just assumed it was being spent on food) and had bought me the new ipod shuffle.

pretty cool, huh? a blackberry and an ipod shuffle? i sure am becoming a techno gadget kinda gal.

second surprise?

he was taking me here for dinner. you can't really tell from the website, but the Rainbow Lodge is a fairly big deal up here. and i had never been before.

so we dropped the older two kids off at paul and donna's and headed the hour to the restaurant.

the following story is being told to help other couples not go through our little disaster.

Problem 1: driving an hour at bedtime with a 3 month old in the car.

henry fussed on and off the entire drive, it really set the mood.

Problem 2: making sure the restaurant is truly serving food.

sam had called and made reservations. we arrived early to the lodge. and it was pretty dang dead. as we unloaded and walked in, a beautiful menu was posted to the door. glorious food options were offered.

we entered, and were greeted by: no one.

eventually a waitress found us, brought us back- not to the actually dinning room, but to the lounge in the back, where we were given a bar menu. come to find out that the lodge doesn't serve dinner on thursdays or mondays. and we were there on a monday. you'd think they would have told sam that when he called to make reservations.

so we ordered chicken tenders to split (sam was starving) in the hopes that we could try another restaurant back in town.

Problem 3: trying a new restaurant that hasn't been given glorious reviews.

so henry was still overly tired, and we were pushing 8pm when we arrived back to town. we had debated getting a couple of our old faithful favorites, but decided to just try something new. a restaurant that had just opened up a few blocks from our house.

we pulled in, were seated instantly.

and received terrible service, food served all at once (instead of spread out) and for entertainment got to watch the teenagers who were working in the kitchen basically dry hump all evening long.

the salad was watered down, the garlic bread consisted of 2 ingredients: bread and butter, and my chicken marsala tasted like noodles just cooked in oil, with mushrooms and chicken thrown in.

it was so disgusting.

and henry was screaming bloody murder, so i ended up enjoying our anniversary outside on the curb.

we gave up and headed home. sam dropped me and henry off, and went to get the other two. he brought home a screaming mason (who was pretty darn sick).

so there we were, 10pm, both exhausted and disappointed. and i was starving. i had saved all my points (weight watchers) for our special evening, and hadn't really eaten anything for dinner.

i was able to nurse my wounds with a root beer float. that was my food highlight.

so what lessons can you learn from this? sam and i sat down the next day and discussed our mishaps:

1) you should never try a new restaurant on a special night. you won't be disappointed, there are always times to try new things, but keep special nights special with things you know are good.

2) you should not bring overly tired babies to new restaurants- it truly affects the ambiance.

3) you shouldn't bring a baby on a special night. if you can't leave the baby at home, the celebrate your special night with take out. we should have eaten locally, then we could have left little henry as well.

there will be several make-ups for this failed attempt at a dinner out, so we aren't to terribly disappointed. we have years of special nights ahead of us. and we won't make these mistakes again!

sam and i,

standing in the same place we were married 7 years earlier.