Sean and I just had our first trip away without kids since our honeymoon! 7 years! We really couldn't think of another time we had gone somewhere without Alex or Kate.

It was a wonderful weekend. Sean planned it all and didn't even tell me where we were going, which was a lot of fun. Driving there he asked if I wanted to know - I told him it was up to him if he wanted to tell me. He didn't, and I'm glad. It made it fun as we were driving to wonder when we would stop, even if I had a general idea of where we were going.

We went to Pittsburgh. Arrived at night to a beautiful city. We drove through the city and stayed on the south side on the other side of the Pitt tunnel (close to the airport). We started Saturday around 10 a.m. and didn't get back to the hotel until about 11:30 p.m. Our first stop was the Mattress Factory, a really cool museum of installation art. It's housed in an old mattress factory (thus the name) and it's a really creepy building, with a few creepy installations, too. My favorites were three pieces by James Turrell, which really made you consider the difference between reality and what you see. Admission to the Mattress Factory also gave us tickets to the Tom Museum, which was just up the alley in a row house vibrantly painted with a mural. The artist (Tom) was there and doing a puppet-making workshop.

After leaving the museums, we found our way to the home of David Wheeler, the massage therapist with whom Sean had made an appointment for me. It was a little strange going into this stranger's home and taking off my clothes, but the massage was well worth it! I may have to go back to Pittsburgh for massages again! It was also fun to chat with a local and get tips on good places to go (although we ended up not going to the restaurant he recommended).

We then drove down to the South Side of Pittsburgh, an area with lots of shops. We ended up in the area called Soutside Works, which seems to be a very new shopping area. We had a late lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (salad and chicken pesto pizza for me, salad for Sean) and split a delicious Carmel Pecan Turtle Cheesecake. The Cheesecake Factory has a huge menu selection (around 200 items), but we were trying to save room for a larger dinner later. It didn't work - we were stuffed when we left there!

We wandered around the shops for a little while, and then drove down to the other end of the South Side to the Shops at Station Square. In retrospect, we should have spent out time wandering around the older shops in the middle of the two, which looked more interesting. We decided to try to eat a small dinner at a Fondue place, but they were booked up until 10:45! So, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe instead and had a small dinner. We had a great table, looking out on a multi-colored fountain with the city in the background.



After dinner we drove to the mid-section of the South Side to City Theatre to see The Good Body. This is the latest by Eve Ensler (who did The Vagina Monologues). This was an adaption of her original one-woman play and had 3 actresses. It was excellent. We sat right in the front at the corner of the stage (seating surrounded 3 sides of the stage), and the actors had to try not to trip over our feet as they were coming on and off the stage! The Good Body used humor to address the issues women have with our bodies, focusing on Eve's obsession with having a flat stomach.

By Sunday morning, Sean was exhausted and sore - not only was this a lot of walking for him, but he had a cold on top of it! I left him to sleep in the hotel and drove over to Kohl's for some shopping. :) We then headed home, but not before an unexpected detour that took us out of Pittsburgh to the north instead of to the east!

The kids had a great weekend. Kate was very excited about her first overnight away from home, Mom and Dad. She was bouncing off the walls on Friday night and didn't go to bed until after 10 (when Grammy and Grandpa had started trying to get her to sleep at 8!). But she didn't seem to miss us at all, and Alex, of course, was fine there, too. He did the CROP walk on Sunday - walked 5 miles and raised $100 for world hunger. Pretty cool!