Monday, September 16, 2013

Epic Super Mega Date!


On Saturday, Nathan and I had a date scheduled from the "Year of Dates" I gave him for Christmas... we were going to Loveland Castle.

We left home at 10:30 am and drove south about 40 minutes, ate lunch at Panera (yum! perfect for a chilly day), and found our way to the castle. It was built by hand by one man (Sir Harry Andrews) over 50 years. All the stones were pulled from the river on the property, and many of the interior walls are made of cement bricks made in milk cartons.  It's really remarkable that one man did all this with his own hands!



Bedroom (where Sir Harry slept- he actually lived in the castle, although he built it for his boy scout troop) with domed ceiling!



The 10 Commandments carved into the wall. Sir Harry was an actual night, and he knighted his scouts who vowed to live their lives by the 10 Commandments. He called his group the Knights of the Golden Trail.


The castle's actual name is Chateau Laroche- Castle of the Rock.



It was very cool! I would never expect to find a real castle in Ohio, much less one built by hand with medieval techniques! It was definitely worth the visit. And only $3 a person!


The castle didn't take very long, so we decided to stop at Treasure Aisles flea market. It was fun to wander around looking at all the junk wears. I did get some nice hiking boots and a bike helmet for Desy.


Next, we had a rerun date. When Desy was a baby, Nathan and I got Chipotle and ate in a park, and we both remembered it as a super nice date... so we did it again! This was actually supposed to be our August date, but we didn't get a chance to do it. It was delicious and relaxing as expected.

We were having such a good day that we decided to ask Robin if she cared if we stayed out longer- she is the best babysitter/Ra ever and offered to put the kids to bed, meaning we had the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted.


We headed up to Epic Loot, our local game store, for board game night. Some random people invited us to play "Ticket to Ride" with them, so we did. It's the biggest selling board game on the market right now, but we'd never played it before. It was fun! I'd definitely play it again. We also played two other games: Love Letter and Dixit. They were both ok but not great. We had a lot of fun playing some new games with some complete strangers.


Lastly, we completed our rerun date by stopping for a Killer Brownie at Dorothy Lane Market. YUM. We got home around 10:30 pm and shared our brownie, for a great end to a great day.

Our date was much longer and more varied than expected, but also much better :)

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