The Drehers: Illuminations at Botanica

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Illuminations at Botanica

So.....................

I have this really awesome husband.

He planned a date night for us. Had me mark it down on my calendar. Wouldn't tell me a thing.

Finally, the day of, I'm bugging him about what we're doing, how I should dress, what kind of food we're having for dinner.

He caved and told me we were gonna eat at the Olive Garden (I love, he hates) and then go to Illuminations at Botanica. Probably the only reason he caved was so I could dress appropriately.

Sunday afternoon, I got all dolled up for our hot date. Our babysitter arrived (aka Grandpa Ed), and we got in the car. Adam asked me which Olive Garden I wanted to go to. I said the west one, since we live on the west side. He was like "Ehhh...I'd rather get out of our neighborhood and not see any of my students, let's go to the east side."

Whatev. Sounds good.

So we drive over there, and it's raining, which I figured would ruin our later plans, so I began to look up movie times as a backup. We decided on a movie to see instead.

We get to Olive Garden and it's PACKED.

I go up to the host stand (I'm always the one who puts in our name at restaurants...is that weird?), but Adam walks right past the host stand and waves me in, as if he had a table reserved. I follow.

We wind around to find a whole table full of friends! (They're all east-siders, hence the sneaky sneak east side Olive Garden decision.) Hooray for a surprise triple date with some of our besties. (Apparently, I had a very surprised/weirded out look on my face.)

We had a great dinner and conversation (it matters not), and then we made a group decision to brave the cold and head to Botanica anyway. We bundled up and walked around Botanica in the freezing mist and had lots of fun! We took photos on our iPhones at a particularly lit up spot.