We just had the most wonderful weekend. This week is our 5th wedding anniversary. D.R.'s folks (Nonna and PaPa) came in for a long weekend to help us celebrate. We all had a great time, especially the girls.
Nonna brought the girls new night gowns, and they were so excited about it they couldn't stop dancing around. Here's a quick video clip of their excitement.





They also helped us plant a lot of new flowers in our garden. Extra man power was key in getting so much work done.
Here's Giuliana smelling her new favorite flower.

The extra man power also gave me a break from pushing both girls on the swings!

On Saturday D.R. and I got a night out without the kids. We went shopping for new sneakers (real romantic, I know!). Then we went out for a fantastic sushi lunch, which was really our dinner. The sushi was amazing, and it was nice to just enjoy each other without the distractions that go along with taking two young children out to a restaurant. It was so nice. We sat there for a long time, not wanting the time to end. After our HUGE lunch, we headed over to our hotel for the night. We stayed at the Embassy Suites, and the room was great. We were on the top floor, and here's a picture of what the inside of the hotel looked like from our room.

We shared a bottle of champagne and toasted our 5th year as husband and wife.
Later in the evening we made our way over to Ravinia Festival for an outdoor concert in the park. This was our first time at the venue, and I must say we were both impressed. We agreed that we must go back again next year, for a concert of music more our style. The act was a violinist who I'm sure is great at her craft, but played very dark and depressing music. We left at intermission! We enjoyed the rest of the evening at the hotel. It's funny how we wanted so badly to get away without our kids, but spent the majority of the day talking about how much the kids would have loved to be there!
We both got a great night sleep, and woke up feeling refreshed and ready to get back to our girls. After a quick work out and a nice breakfast, we headed home. The kids were happy to see us, but I definitely got the feeling we missed them more than they missed us! They had a blast with Nonna and PaPa, and never asked about us once.

So, our overnight experience taught us a few things. We learned that we need to do these kind of things once in a while to rejuvenate our relationship as man and wife. We also learned that right now, one night away from our girls is plenty! We missed them like crazy.