All Aboard!

In my last entry, I mentioned that Scot and I (and Andy) were banished to our bedroom last night (watching the depressing Mizzou loss). So I felt that I should provide some additional explanation of our banishment.

Well, Matt's girlfriend, Jenny, recently had a birthday. Since Matt cannot drive yet, they've never been able to go to dinner just the two of them. Therefore, for her birthday gift we planned out a fun little date night for just the two of them last night. The theme: A Night on the Orient Express. So Matt and I made up something to look like a train ticket. It had the Orient Express insignia, her name, the departure date and time (last night, 6:30), the name of the terminal (her street name), the track (her house number), and the train, car, and seat numbers (the month, date, and year of their anniversary). It turned out really cute. So Matt gave this to Jenny at her birthday party last weekend, but wouldn't tell her what it was for.

So we/the train picked Jenny up last night (the train arrived closer to 6:40 due to the ice storm we got yesterday). We then dropped Matt and Jenny off at Kobe's Japanese Steakhouse so they could have dinner on their own. This is one of those restaurants where you sit around the grill and the chef prepares your meal in front of you. It's very interactive, and they said they really liked it. Meanwhile, Scot, Andy, and I went to Old Chicago for our dinner and to watch the first part of the Missouri game. Matt texted us when they were finished, and we went to pick them up. Oh yeah- at dinner he gave her a necklace. It was the Chinese symbol for Love. OK- so our theme had a few inconsistencies- Japanese restaurant, Chinese symbol. Get over it. :)

After dinner, we all returned back to our house so they could watch the classic movie, Murder on the Orient Express. We let them watch it in the living room on the big TV, which brings us back to why Scot, Andy, and I were banished to our bedroom. Their opinions were mixed about the Orient Express movie, but overall they said they really enjoyed the evening. Matt did good to keep everything a surprise, so Jenny didn't know what was going on until it happened. This allowed us to have some fun with her. On the way home from dinner we were teasing about the next part of the night- anywhere from watching the Japanese version of Godzilla to a subtitled Kung-Fu movie.

There was another "fun," but unplanned part of the evening. Due to the aforementioned ice storm, our driveway was a sheet of ice (the roads were fine, but the driveway hadn't melted yet.) So when we pulled into the driveway after dinner, our car stopped about halfway up and then started turning and sliding backwards. We ended up turning 90 degrees across the driveway, and then slid back down. It was a little scary, for fear that we were going to go forward into our ditch. However, Scot maneuvered it beautifully, and we just ended up turning a complete 180 degrees and drove back out of our driveway. So we drove once more around the street (we live on a circle), and then pulled back into our driveway and successfully made it into our garage! We joked and said it was a planned part of the theme of the night. Ever heard of the movie, "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift"...

So except for the Missouri loss, the evening seemed to be a success!