I is for Ice Cream Sundaes

I was a little difficult—again with the vowels. I did come up with a good many options (Incahoots restaurant, ice skating), but discounted them all for one reason or another. When asking for suggestions, all I got was ice cream. And, well, that just seemed a little boring since we get ice cream once a week or so. One day it occurred to me that you can actually make your own ice cream, and that’s really cool. I lucked up—my grandparents have an ice cream freezer that I could borrow so that I wouldn’t have to buy one. It sat in the garage for almost 2 weeks, along with the ice cream salt, and Ed never noticed it. I felt really sly! I got the recipe for simple vanilla ice cream—eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, and of course ice and salt. It did take us a few minutes to figure out how to work the thing, but we got it going! While it was making the ice cream, we had Italian food out on the patio. I had decorated the table with a red and white tablecloth and put candles out—a little Tuscany in Alabama! About an hour or so later, we had some really good soft serve ice cream. We doctored it up with caramel and chocolate syrup, berries, and pecans. The ice cream alone was delicious. And, we both did something new—neither of us had ever made ice cream before!

H is for Bargain Hunting

This is probably the most creative alphabet date we’ve had yet. All of them have been a blast, but this one is definitely the most creative with the letter. And, it was a real adventure. Ed came home with $20—we each got $10. This is all the money we could take, and we were going to go places like thrift stores, second hand shops, pawn shops, etc. We started at an Unclaimed Storage place near home. I pass it every day going to work, but had never been in there. There were some real finds in there! I found a book by my favorite author for only $1 and Ed got a salad bowl set for $8 (we’re going to refinish it). From there, we visited 2 thrift stores and a pawn shop or two. Our treasures included 2 books, a lego piece (for my cousin who loves legos!), and a salad bowl set. With our remaining $8, we went to a dollar movie and then to Krispy Kreme for Hot Now Doughnuts!! It was a great date, and we went to places that we’ve never been.

G is for Go Karts and Mini Golf

I’ll start by saying that I had a really hard time with the letter G. Now, that it’s behind us, I can come up with all sorts of stuff—gardening, Gardens, grandparents, golfing, Great Outdoors, gazpacho—but at the time, I was pretty stumped. Maybe it was just a bad week. With a friend’s help, I found a location, and go karts and mini golf is about as fun as it gets! We went to a place called Treetop Family Adventure. If you’re local to the Birmingham area, I highly recommend this place for a great time. They have go karts, water balloon wars, 18 holes of mini golf, laser tag, and a really cool arcade. So, it’s good for a fun date or a family day out! When we got there, I told Ed what we were doing and he was totally stoked. Ok, so was I!!! It’s really cool how they do things there—you get a card, load it with any amount of money, and as you do things, you swipe it and it deducts the money. We got there kind of early because there was a chance or rain and we just can’t have that. So, there weren’t many people

there, and we were the only ones racing go karts. The track was awesome—full of curves with no straights. This is helpful if you’re in the lead, as I was the whole time, because you can block people from passing you. The track was slick and the karts went a good speed. Very fun! After that, we decided we were in for 18 holes of mini golf. The course was really nice and there were a few holes where it took a lot of strokes to get the ball in the hole, but we managed. I got 1 hole-in-one and that’s just a miracle in itself. Ok Ok…in the end, Ed beat me by a few strokes, but that was only fair since I kicked his butt on the go karts. We had a great time and will probably go back again for play some of the other games they have there!