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On Saturday morning, Dave went to a local gun show with his friend John.  For the first time ever, my husband actually has his own friends, friends he sees independently from me.  It warms my heart and I love that he goes off on these little "man dates" alone.  I think every human being should have friends.  It's a priority: food, shelter, clothing, FRIENDS.

The best part of this new development is that John is my friend Tana's husband.  I met Tana at the local mall.  I sat down at the play area and within about two minutes our boys were chasing each other around pretending their shoes were light sabers.  It was a match made in heaven and I feel incredibly fortunate to have met Tana.  The fact that our husbands also share interests and have become such good buddies is the frosting.  

The hard part, though, is that Tana and I are virtually ALWAYS stuck with the kids.  Don't get me wrong, one of my favorite things about Tana is that she seems to enjoy being a mother every bit as much as I do, but the fact that literally 100% of our social exchanges involve the kids just doesn't give us much time to chat.  While our husbands were at the gun show on Saturday, she and I took the kids to one of those indoor play places with all the tubes and slides.  The big kids had a blast chasing each other around and burning off boy energy, but Tana and I had to keep track of our younger kids the whole time.  Genoa and Austen are about six months apart, so they can't quite play together yet.  I spent ninety minutes taking Genoa down the slide while Tana kept Austen busy in the toddler area.  We barely got to see each other, much less speak.

Then we went out to lunch and I even though we tried to talk, I was far too easily distracted by my children to be a good listener.  When Dave got home, he told me all the different things he and John talked about and then asked what Tana and I discussed and I couldn't even give him a single topic.  I could remember that Austen crunched up his Pirates Booty all over the place and that Genoa covered herself in ketchup, but I couldn't remember what we talked about.  My brain was too busy tracking my kids.

Part of me feels jealous of Dave and John and their carefree man time, but part of me also knows that I can see Tana almost any day of the week because I'm home and not slaving away at the office.  But still, I think we're overdo for some alone time ourselves.  Maybe next weekend we can leave the kids home with the boys and go have a meal in peace and quiet.