The Best Date Night EVER!

Lee had a birthday! October 8th was Lee's birthday. Our tradition is to get a sitter and invite a few couples out to dinner with us to celebrate. We invited Greg and Tracey Butters and Emily and Craig Woll to go out with us and we left Ally and Eve and Cooper home with a teenage girl from church. Greg and Tracey have lived in China for 12 years (I think) so they really know their way around. Tracey sort of took over the planning for the evening, which was perfectly fantastic.

Tracey and Greg have 6 kids and a big van so we all piled in and off we went. We started out at a hot pot restaurant, which I had never even heard of prior to the night. Greg is very fluent in Mandarin, so he ordered for all of us. It's kind of like the Melting Pot, in that they put a huge pot in front on you on a gas stove. It's full of tasty broth and you just order whatever you want to cook. Since Greg ordered, we had no idea what we were getting into. The servers wheeled out this huge cart full to the brim with meat sliced thin like deli meat, a whole plate of just mushrooms (more varieties than I even knew existed!), lettuce, spinach, cilantro, some other green vegetable, and more and more meat. Everyone just threw in whatever they wanted to eat and then you wait for it to boil for awhile and then just hope you can find what you put in. The pot looked absolutely disgusting by the time we were done, but it all tasted great. I avoided the meat (of course) and stuck to the vegetables. It was fantastic.

Next we headed off to get foot massages. I have never ever been out on a group date where we finished off the evening with a massage. It was totally awesome! They brought all six of us into a room with eight recliners lined up along the wall. We rolled up our pants and started out with a short back, neck and shoulder massage and then had 30 more minutes of foot and leg massage. It was really cool. About 15 minutes into the massage another couple from church showed up. It was really funny to have all 8 chairs full of Mormons! :) So we have decided that we like this new lifestyle, right down to date nights.