Hey! Guess what!

We actually did something other than sit on the couch and watch Heroes!

A little while back, I was thinking about Valentine's Day. We usually celebrate by going to a nice restaurant for dinner and exchanging chocolate (for me) and a scrapbook (for Ben). Our Valentine's Days are not full of surprises, but they're nice. Romantic, quiet, fun. However, having a baby complicated things a bit this year. Yeah, we could have gotten a babysitter and still gone out. But we had a lot of reasons for shooting down that idea. So, what to do...

Go to Brussels!

Brussels is no Paris, but it's a really nice city, it's only an hour away, and on the weekends you can usually score some pretty nice hotel deals. So we booked a fancy package at a fancy hotel, and on Saturday we took our sweet time getting ready, walking the dogs, going to the market, etc in the morning and then after lunch we packed up the baby and drove to Brussels. And it was fantastic.

Our room was great. It was huge, which is a pretty big deal around here because hotel rooms are often the size of a walk-in closet. Or a regular closet if you're going the budget route.

So you can understand Ben's excitement over the enormous bathroom.

And the equally enormous room.

I just like it when the bathrooms have telephones. I feel very important.

Our fancy shmancy hotel room also had bathrobes and chocolates

And a fabulous balcony

And it was just generally fabulous, minus the slightly dated wallpaper. I couldn't decide if I loved or hated the mint green wallpaper with hummingbirds on it. I think I loved it. The mint green bedspread I could have done without.

After taking about a million pictures of our lovey dovey Belgian Valentine's adventure in our hotel room, we went out walking and ended up shopping. We found and English book store! And a really great toy store! And chocolates! So many chocolates! And Ben's favorite grocery store that sells sugar donuts! And a huge, wonderful kitchen store!

And then it was getting late (sort of. Late for Wes anyways, since he goes to bed around 7:30) so we picked up food from my favorite place for a hotel room picnic and went back, put Wes to bed, and set up our dinner and a movie.

Perfect! Until about an hour into the movie when we had an uninvited guest to our romantic dinner for deux.

He was so cute we let him stay up with us for a little while. Really he was having a little trouble sleeping because he's been fighting a pretty icky cold, and we took pity on him. Poor guy.

The next morning was my very favorite part of our Fancy Hotel Weekend. Why?

Breakfast!

Lounging in bed! Comfy jammies for everyone!



This all sounds great, right? Well, it was pretty perfect. And then we had to leave, which was okay. But we ran into a teensy little problem.

After we checked out, we wheeled all our crap down the block to the parking garage where we had left the car. Ben starts gathering stuff to take to the car while Wes and I wait at the entrance so we can wander Brussels a bit more before going home. As Ben is pulling things from under Wes's stroller I start to look around nervously. Uh, why are all these other people with suitcases just standing around outside the garage? Why is nobody going in? Why does it look so dark in there? That sign that says "Sundays - Closed" couldn't be talking about the parking garage, right? Right?!?

Wrong. The parking garage was closed. Joke's on us. Our car was inside the closed garage. Ha. ha. Luckily we weren't the only idiots who neglected to read the sign when we parked there and one guy called the parking company and got someone to come unlock the garage, and since there was a whole group of idiots, we split the fee that they charged for this service between all of us, so it wasn't so bad. The guy came, he unlocked the metal grate of the exit ramp, and we all walked down to our cars, in what Ben and I came to refer to as the "Dumbass parade".

Then it was all good, right? Well, we had parked on a different level than any of the other people, so we were all alone down on empty level three. We felt a little nervous that the garage guy would forget about us, so we hurried to throw everything in the car and get out. I mean, surely he wouldn't forget us and lock us in, right? We were just a little nervous. And as our car made it up to the second level, the lights in the garage dimmed. Uhhh oh... and as we turned the corner to exit, we saw that garage man had indeed forgotten about us and pulled the metal grate back down and started walking off. Waaaaait! Ben started honking his horn and the guy came back and let us out, thankfully. We made a mental note to perhaps read the signs in the future.

So it all ended well. And then we got lunch before leaving.


and Ben got a waffle (or two).

So all was right with the world.

Hope everyone else had a lovely weekend, too!