Let me start out by saying that making friends isn't something that generally comes easy to either me or my husband. He is a total geek and therefore his social skills leave much to be desired... And I just tend to avoid human interaction as much as possible because people generally suck. So, needless to say, it took us awhile to make enough friends to have someone to go out with and someone to watch our kids... Interestingly enough, our daughter's Hearing Loss turned out to be our catalyst for meeting Misha and Jolie, who have now been are good friends for about 6 months. 

          We have a speech therapist (Marsha) and sign language instructor (Rachella) that have been coming to our house once a week to work with Stori since her initial diagnosis of mild/moderate hearing loss last July. One day last summer, Marsha told me there was a family with a daughter that is Zoren's age,  who she thought we would get along really well with, and she gave me their number so we could meet. We met and have been getting together a couple times a month to take the kids on outings and such. It is so refreshing for us to know other parents who have a child with hearing loss, and a huge bonus that we all have so much in common regarding interests, ideals, and past experiences. 

Anyway, we finally made friends!!! Yay!!! And we finally got a chance to go out on a double date with them during Denver Restaurant Week, which is a total bonus because we got to eat really Great Food at an unbeatable price! The only catch was that we needed to find a babysitter and actually leave Zbot and Stori home for the evening, which was something we hadn't really done before... Well, I suppose that's not entirely true as our families have watched them for a couple hours here and there when they came out to visit or we went to Wisconsin but that's not quite the same as leaving them with people they don't really know. Luckily, my husband has a good friend at work (Mark) who offered to come over with his wife and 4 kids (ages 5-13) and watch them while we went out for the evening so we jumped at the opportunity.

The good news is that the night went off without a hitch. Mark and his family showed up right on time to watch our little cubs and both of them were so excited to have other kids at the house to play with them that they didn't even react to me and my hubby leaving, aside from a short wave goodbye. 

We met Misha and Jolie at a cute little mediterranean restaurant called Olivea about an hour before our reservation, so we sat at the bar and tried a few of their signature drinks. I had something called The Impressionist which was a vodka martini with a hint of lavender and Steve had an Ophelia which was composed of gin, lemon, pomegranate molasses, and a hint of rosemary. Excellent. We were seated early and had a killer 3 course dinner which totally exceeded our expectations. We had great conversation and once dinner was over we decided to go out for a few drinks at Vita before coming home. Vita (meaning, "life" in Italian") was a cute little bar/restaurant which is actually right on the other side of a huge funeral parlor. As Misha pointed out, it is an interesting dichotomy of life and death because the signs for each establishment are literally back to back... 

We ended up getting home around midnight to sleeping children and a report that they had a blast and went to bed like little angels. So awesome! We could not have asked for a better night! Great friends, great food, excellent conversation, and coming home to happy babies is more than we could have asked for!! Total success!!

-E