TRYING TO DO WHAT WE NEED: GETAWAY

Every year, we head somewhere with CFA in February, and we usually attach a little getaway for us to that.  This year, we headed back to Dallas, and John and I scheduled one extra night.  We deliberated for a while as to what we should do with this one night.  We've spent a ton of time in Dallas, and we even have friends that live there or nearby.  I wish with all of my heart that we had enough time to do all the things, but we don't.  We realized that we just needed some time to ourselves without much planned at all.  We needed (and still need!) down time.

It is amazing that doing just about anything without our children feels pretty glamorous - even eating at Firehouse Subs in Texarkana.  We got to Dallas mid-afternoon and checked in Hotel Zaza, which turned out to be quite lovely.

John had planned a special Valentine's dinner for us that was a surprise for me, and let me just say that he knocked it out of the park.  We got dressed up, and I found another occasion to wear my long pink tulle skirt, which is never subtle, but I love it.

He found a restaurant that serves soufflés for every course, which was perfectly unique to us.  Also - everything we had was absolutely delicious.

Their signature appetizer is the "Marshmallow Soup", which is a tomato based soup with goat cheese "marshmallows."  Now I just want goat cheese marshmallows on everything I ever eat.  Doesn't seem like too much to ask.

For the main course, I actually ordered the lobster soufflé which came baked in an actual lobster.  We felt very fancy.  

After dinner, we were so stuffed that we decided to walk a bit and ended up wandering around a nearby Trader Joe's.  Why are they not in Little Rock?  I would LOVE to have this flower selection at these prices, though I will say I have become a frequenter of the sale flowers at Kroger and can find good deals there.

Because of our current level of exhaustion in life, we headed back to the room and were asleep by 9:30 p.m.  We slept for 13 hours and probably could have kept sleeping.  We went back to one of our favorite brunch spots, Henry's Majestic.  Yum.

Having a brief 30 hours of just us was such a treat, and I'm so glad we got a little downtime before heading to the CFA convention that we love but is sort of tiring as well.