Date Night - Over Night

Keith and I have yet to leave the boys over night.  The only time we have left any of our kids over night was in 2009 to go to Las Vegas and we flew Grandma Garner in to stay with Oliver.  Thanks to our amazing friends the Hess', they inspire us as parents.  We took the plunge and asked the baby sitter to stay over night.  If Geoff and Stephanie can do it with three kids, surely we can manage leaving two kids.  So... we did it.  She arrived at 5:00 so that she could feed the boys dinner.  We jumped in the car and headed downtown.  First up, we went our for an amazing bruchetta appetizer and a drink.

After our happy hour, we went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.  We were staying at the Grand Hyatt in Downtown Denver.

After sprucing up a bit we were ready to hit the town.  Carrie is ready to roll.

Keith is quite handsome and ready to hit the town as well.

On our stroll down 16th street we noticed a significant sign at the top of a building.

Ashford!

This may sound familiar.

Keith Ashford

Oliver Ashford

It's a family name that Keith got from his Grandfather.

Ta-Da!

We made it to Larimer Square.

We opted to go to dinner at Rioja since we had been wanting to try it.  We called and they said if we were there in 30 minutes they might be able to squeeze us in.

Ahh... the happy couple on Date Night - Over Night.

We settled in at the bar while we waited for our table.  They had a kitchen bar seat that they were waiting to open up.  It over looked the kitchen and we could watch them prepare the meals.

After a short wait the waiter came to us with a top secret proposal.  He had a booth open up and we could have it if we wanted it.  Well... since it was so top secret, we jumped on it!

The food at Rioja was A-MAZE-ING!

We started off with this appetizer that was like a Lays potato chip.  You couldn't eat just one bit.

But the question was... how do we take the first bite?

Keith dove into it with a knife and fork and we made it into bite size pieces.  It was So Delish!

 For the main course Keith opted for pork chops and I had salmon.  The salmon was sushi grade.  The pork chop was tender.  The best part of the whole thing was Keith's side dish, cheese tater tots with a sour cream and chive sauce.  Of course, all of the food had much fancier titles than I just described but this is my interpretation. The tater tots were so amazing that we drooled over the though of them for days to come.

For dessert, we couldn't decide between the cheesecake (left) and the chocolate mouse (right).  We finally opted for the mouse.  The waitress was so great that she brought us both.  Oh yeah... she knew she would be greatly rewarded!

For a second (or third) dessert, they brought us sugar crystallized mint leaves.  It was an odd concept but actually quite refreshing.

When we got back to the room, Keith has surprised me by ordering wine and strawberries (Champagne was another option but it was not my first option.  He knows I'm more of a red wine girl.  Ahhh!!  What a sweetie!)  We expected big juicy strawberries.  Instead, we got strawberry compost.  Maybe it would have been good in the champagne but with wine, it wasn't the same.  We just laughed and took a picture.

The next morning we texted the baby sitter and she said everything was great, so we went to breakfast.

Before we headed out we took a photo of our room with a view from the 24th floor.

We thought we were staying at a different Hyatt that has amazing views of the mountains.  Since we were confused on our location, we asked for a mountain view.  This is the mountain view from this Hyatt.

Let me zoom in for you!

It would have been a great day for a view of the mountains.  Next time, we'll get the right location.

We had a great 17 hours without the direct responsibilities of kids.  Kellan struggles to sleep through the night and we finally got a night of undisturbed sleep.  (Fortunately, he chose this to be a great night to sleep all night just for the baby sitter.  We were quite relieved.)  We had such a nice time and the baby sitter enjoyed it as well so we decided that we'll have to do it again sometime.  Maybe, sometime soon!