Date Night. Almost.

I must brag.

On myself.

Yesterday was cold. And windy. And we had a tournament game in the armpit of Missouri...a good 1.5 hour drive from where we live (in the middle of nowhere) to the host school (in the middle of nowhere). Seriously. It's a bad precursor to the day ahead when you have to stop at a gas station before you leave town just to stock up on sodas and snacks since the town you're headed to has nothing. No gas station. No Wal-Mart.

And the worst thing of all: no cell phone signal.

And even with all these factors thrown in, I decided to get out of my nice, warm pajamas and leave the comfort of my warm house and sit outside all day at a baseball game. I bundled up in long socks, a hoodie and my puffy Christmas blanket and prepared to freeze.

And it was so worth it.

We played so, so well. Our boys were hitting and fielding great - despite the fact that most of the boys are starting to come down with the flu.

I'm thinking that antibiotics might be the new baseball-superpower.

We had a massive 9-run inning in the bottom of the third, which put us ahead 12-1. We stayed ahead for the rest of the game, making the final score 16-5 in five innings.

I love five-inning games, especially when it's a bitterly windy 50 degrees outside.

Matt had driven up separately from the bus so that he could stay and scout the game after ours since we'd be playing the winner this Tuesday. I had ridden up with some friends (their son is on the team) and us women just figured we'd leave after the game...hence the excitement over the run-rule. Our husbands, however, had a different idea. How about we ALL stay in the cold and ALL enjoy the next game?

I think the only reason we agreed was because we were under the influence of multiple bags of Twizzlers.

That, and my husband knows how to work a proposition. He promised me food, real food after the second game if I wanted to ride home with him. Not food from the concession stand, not food in a wrapper passed through a window. Real, sit-down, "ma'am, here's your menu" food.

If I squint my eyes and tilt my head, it almost looks like a date.

Little did I know the second game would go all seven innings and we wouldn't make it back to civilization until after 8pm (for reference purposes, our game started at 2pm). By then I was a frozen popsicle and so tired that I could barely order my dinner (I really wanted chocolate cake) at the restaurant.

But it was a night out with my husband, and I had almost forgotten what that looked like. We had fun laughing (about baseball), talking (about baseball) and spending time with good friends.

We drove home, pulled into the driveway, Matt unlocked the back door, walked me inside and gave me a kiss.

And then promptly jumped back into his truck to go up to the school to do stats.