Our 8 Year Anniversary Date

So we just celebrated our 8 year anniversary! I don't know why,

but this year really stood out to me as a significant amount of marriage.

Maybe it's because we just survived the "7 year itch"? : )

I can't say that I married Mike for his planning of creative dates,

so I took over and secretly planned a nice evening for us.

I have a REALLY hard time keeping secrets that I'm excited about,

so it was difficult not to let Mike in on my plans, but actually pulled

it off and totally surprised him. I even played dumb and pretended

that we weren't going to be able to do anything except a quick dinner

and that baby Blake would have to accompany us.

Mike surprised me with this beautiful bouquet.

First stop of the night, Kobe Beef Japanese Steak House (like Benihana).

It was a lot of fun to see our dinners being prepared

in front of us. I ordered Teriyaki Chicken and Mike

ordered shrimp. The meals included onion soup, salad,

steamed or fried rice, and grilled onions. Our chef seemed to be

pretty serious, until...

He extinguished the fire with this little "pee pee boy".

Pretty funny!

We treated ourselves to dessert. Mike ordered Japanese Fried

Ice cream.

I thought I was ordering Strawberry Fried Ice cream, but then this

arrived. At first I was pretty dissapointed, but it was REALLY delicious!

After dinner we had just over an hour to kill, so we stopped at Kohls

and did a little clothes shopping for Mike.

With a little coaxing, Mike got some new, "out of the ordinary", clothes.

I'd have to say he looked pretty snappy in them. Now it's a matter of

getting him to put them to good use.



We ended the evening with a 9:00 PM, hour long gondola ride

through the Naples Canals, in Long Beach.

It was the perfect night for a ride. The only noise
to be heard was the clanging of cabinets and dishes off in the distance,
from home owners along the canal. The water was totally still. The gondola
paddled through the water, like a knife through butter. For reasons I don't
fully understand, the water glowed. It had something to do with
a type of algae. When the paddle hit the water, it looked florescent
turquoise. And if you looked closely, sometimes you'd see fish glowing too.

We had a great gondolier! He was really nice, friendly, and spoke in a soft voice.
He sang to us twice while under the bridges.
He actally had a pretty good voice, here's a sample.

The entire night was perfect! It was a wonderful break away from reality!