22 Years and Still Going Strong

Yesterday was our 22nd wedding anniversary. Neither one of us really wanted to go out to a fancy restaurant or anything so I scoured the weekend events and found an outdoor concert to attend. We asked our old babysitter Claire, now home from college, to take care of Katie and Caleb from 12:30pm to 5:30pm then Josh took over after that. He made dinner for everyone, got the little kids to take their showers, and put them to bed promptly at 8:30pm. It is so nice to have a babysitting age teen in the house!!

Meanwhile, Matt and I drove down to Red Wing, MN (about 50 minutes from home) to attend the Red House Records "Blues at the Barn" concert. It was held at the outdoor amphitheartre of the Hobgoblin Music Company. They make wooden harps, dulcimers and mandolins. In the store they also sell celtic flutes, autoharps, accordians, tons of sheet music and CD's. It's a really neat place. Next time my sister comes to town I'll have to take her down there--she's a musician.

The afternoon was wonderful with beautiful weather, great live music, the rolling hills of the Mississippi River Valley and a picnic. The music ranged from acoustic blues to bluegrass to folk. We enjoyed all of it especially a last minute substitue band called Molly Maher and her Disbelievers. We bought their CD and listened to it on the drive home. There were about 150 people there of all ages--many in the over 55 age catagory of 1970's hippie holdovers. I packed a nice picnic lunch of french baggettes, deli meats and cheeses, crackers, spreadable herbed feta, three types of mustards, Snapples, and strawberries. It was so nice to have a whole day alone with Matt with no other time commitments.

After the concert Matt and I walked around historic downtown Red Wing. Everything was closed but we did some window shopping. At 7:30pm we stopped for some beer and dessert at the outdoor veranda restaurant of the historic St. James Hotel. Very nice. We took the long way home and continued our tradition of always ending our dates at a bookstore. I found a hardcover copy of Rhett Butler's People in the 75% off bin and Matt found a large print compilation of two Mrs. Polifax books for $1.50. So I spent less than $10 for three new hard cover novels to round out my summer reading. Fun!!

We arrived home about 10pm. A good time was had by all. I think this was the first time in many years that Matt and I have spent over half a day together alone while we were both awake. Ha ha. We hope to plan more of these outings in our future.