Lions and Laughs with the Larners

After a few crazy weekends working on the house, and dealing with the wedding, we decided to forget about our projects, and do something fun!  We have both always wanted to go to the Detroit zoo, so we packed our bags and headed to Detroit.  Aaron has a cousin that lives there (we went to the Pistons game with them earlier this year) so we crashed their weekend and all went to the zoo together! 

Talking a 1 year old to the zoo is SO MUCH FUN!!  I'm about to marry a grown child, and Amanda and I joked about how excited Aaron was getting about the animals, but watching their little girl watch the animals was so cute!  Plus she is the cutest little baby on the earth! I could watch her facial expressions all day long.

The zoo was lots of fun..it was sooooo hot.  Somehow I managed to get a wonderful burn on my left shoulder.  I have been tanning so I have a nice base color for the wedding, and I have been really careful about lines, and now I have a lovely strap mark on my shoulder...awesome.

After the zoo we went home, and had grown up's night out!  John and Amanda had a sitter all lined up, and it was the first time their little lady wasn't staying with a grandparent it was an actual sitter.  It was so funny/cute to listen to Amanda give instructions!  I have to say, while we were out, she was a very good trusting mama, and didn't call and check in every 5 minutes!  I know I won't be that calm and collected!  We headed out for a great dinner, and comedy show!  It was so much fun.  Aaron and I always go out to dinner, and we hit a movie every now and then, but we never actually get all dressed up and do date night.  It really made us think.  We promised on our way home today, we would do an official date night once a month.  Something that we don't always do, where we have to get a little dressed up (that was my rule) and something that would expose us to different things and activities that are around our city!

John and Amanda live right in front of a pond, so we slept with the windows open, and had nice breeze and listened to the frogs all night, it was so peaceful!  This morning we woke up and sadly said our goodbyes, and headed out to Ikea!

Ikea is one of my favorite stores.  I would love to be able to walk in to their show room, pick up a "room" and put it in my house.  Sadly I'm not a zillionare and can't do that, but we made out really well!  We go some decorative pieces, and a new TV stand.  We pretty much got everything we went for and then some!  Of course I explained to Aaron that the reason we did so well money wise was because we have to put everything together ourselves.  Anyone who had every put something together from Ikea knows how OBNOXIOUS it is.  It will truly test how solid your relationship is if you can manage to put your stuff together without killing your partner.

We bought a bed side lamp.....took us 25 minutes to put that animal together, and we were on the verge of killing each other.  We managed to survive and it's sitting blissfully on our nightstand.  Probably mocking us at how long it took us, but regardless..we did it! 

We had a wonderful, relaxing (minus the assembly of the lamp) weekend.  We spent it with wonderful people, and had a great time reconnecting!

xoxo
<3 Karissa