Sensational Sunday!

Before I went to bed last night I wrote a list of things I need to do today.  Here is it

*laundry-contine to push through
*make pasta for hubby
do something with the *chicken-make pecan chicken?
*yogurt (skim!)
*get mail
*costco, need lemon juice

Instead...when I woke up unusally early this morning my husband asked for my phone and asked what I had planned for the the day. "Nothing special," I replied.
"Oh good, I've got a surprise for you, and you can't guess it.  Go take a shower and dress up...we are going into DC today."
See...my husband doesn't generally like leaving the house. He has this theory about setting his house up as his comfortable castle and never leaving it.  It works for him, but for someone as social as I am, it can get annoying (hence my making up a meetup.com group!).  Because of the rarity of him wanting to leave the house, much less voluntarily going into the city, I hurried to get ready and tried really hard not to guess correctly (since he said we wouldn't do it if I guessed it correctly).  I have a habit of randomly guessing correctly, and it drives him insane.  We were out the door around 10am heading down to the metro.  I'm wearing my favorite purple velvet coat. It isn't too heavy and it is perfect for the cool weather. Much more practical than the short shorts I saw girls shivering in today.
When we got to the metro and got on the train, the first person I saw was the founder of another meetup group that I met ON FRIDAY.  The probability blows my mind!

Turns out we were going to see the Broadway Musical of The Color Purple!  We had a bit of time to kill before the show...

so we stopped to smell the flowers

ironically purple tulips.  They smelled like honey...

Since it was a Sunday Matinee, there were a lot of empty seats, and we were in the fifth row, center.

obligatory theatre shot...

The opening screen.  Dear God,  I am fourteen years old.  I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me. 

The show was pretty awesome. I would highly suggest seeing it if you have read the book or seen the movie. It follows the movie apparently more than the book. One of the challenges in making a musical that spans 40 years is expressing to the audience the passage of time.  I think that if you hadn't seen the movie or read the book their way of expressing it would be difficult to follow.  

The book is graphic and disturbing at times.  The musical portrayed these hardships while not being overly graphic or glossing over them.  There were some seriously hilarious scenes (including some VERY ripped field workers "flirting" with Celie when she first comes to Mister's house).  The whole thing comes off as a humorous story of overcoming hardship and finding love.  My husband's favorite character was Sophia whose tag line is, "HELL NO!"   The National Theatre is running a special next week for $29 tickets on Easter. If you are interested--check it out! It is worth the time and prices. The acting/singing were amazing.  

Best pickup line from the movie is, "If you need anything else done around here Ma'am, just call...it doesn't have to be plumbin.'"  Like I said earlier--it was hilarious.  

main course was this ribeye steak and onion fries

Next...oh yes, this amazing day isn't over yet, Aaron suggested was meander towards the Ceiba Restaurant where we went on one of our first dates.  Since they take reservations and it is barely 5pm, I didn't think we'd be able to get dinner but Aaron strode in and said "Reservation for 5pm" and gave my name.  Wait...what?!  Did he just make that up to pretend we had reservations?  No...he had made them online earlier when he was hiding in his office while I got ready.  The true surprise was the dinner at Ceiba Restaurant, NOT the show.  See, when we first met he took me there and it was that dinner and the following show we saw, Avenue Q, at the National Theatre, that made me realize how serious our relationship was, and ultimately that I was going to marry him.  It was wonderful to relive those moments and make new amazing memories, plus...the food was AMAZING...

this was right after he told me about the surprise. He still looks...sneaky

We had a lovely metro ride home...seeing the most adorable little Asian baby that I wanted to snuggle so much.  Her mom kept trying to get her to wave at us, and she was like uhhh...no. We loved that she was sitting in her stroller with a plastic cover, and propping her feet up on it like it was an easy chair. Too cute for words.  

Now we are sitting at home on the couch with a snoring cat between us, and I can say with certainty that this was a much better Sunday than I had originally planned!