Heaven for a $1.50.

Steve and I have reached an epoch in our lives. I'm not exactly sure what "epoch" means, but I've wanted to use it ever since I was eight-years-old and read Anne of Green Gables. I think it means "an important milestone or moment," but I can't be absolutely sure.

Anyway, Laura is now twelve-years-old and can legally babysit. On Friday, Steve and I put the younger kids to bed and then...left the house. It was liberating. It was thrilling. It was kinda scary, we only stayed away for an hour just to be sure the house hadn't burned down. But, oh, what an hour it was!

This is what we did. About a month ago, I discovered this little cookie shop inside the Sycamore Mall. For those of you who don't live in Iowa City, the Sycamore Mall is the forgotten mall. It can't hold a candle to the Coralridge Mall. It has no GAP. It has no Abercrombie and Fitch. In fact, most of the stores are vacant. The music track is stuck playing The Top 40 from 1982.

We love it.

Anyway, there's this cookie shop, and a while ago the owner discovered his kids have celiac's disease, so he makes a whole line of gluten-free cookies and cupcakes for about $1.50 each. Here they are:

And the walls are worth a good read, too. Here's this fun quote:

"Research tells us 14 out of 10 adults like cookies."

Another one says, "Men can't live on cookies alone. But women can."

Next door is a Dairy Queen. Steve's favorite. He used to work there in high school. Not at this particular shop, but one somewhere in Canada.

So he bought a peanut buster parfait and I bought a cookie, and for $5.00 we had the perfect date.

Here's Steve eating. I always seem to take pictures of him eating.

I told him that and then he posed like this:

A sample of our conversation, while listening to the song, "Sarah":

Steve: Why do they always write songs about girls but not guys?

Jenn: There's a song called, "David Duchovney."

Steve: Why isn't there a song called, "Randy"?

Jenn: Or Harold?

Steve: Or Gary?

Also we tried to come up with My Little Pony names, ones that don't exist but sound like they could, like Twinklesugar or Moonheart.

Then we went to the dollar store and made fun of stuff in there.

And then we went home. And the house was still standing.

Then we fell asleep fifteen minutes into watching Harry Potter 5. It was a good night.