By Shannon Magsam, married 10 years to the same sweet guy

Lingerie? Check. Presents centered around his ‘10 favorite things’? Check. The I’m-so-ready-for-a-weekend-alone-with-my-husband good mood? Check.

I thought I had everything I needed for our 10th anniversary weekend until I started getting ready for dinner that first night. Extra clothes? Uncheck. Darnit! I almost got bent out of shape, but then I realized that A) The Mt. Magazine Lodge restaurant isn’t black-tie only or anything, and B) The lack of choices just fit right in with the simplicity theme of our weekend plans.

So I just threw on some red lipstick and a red scarf for “pretty” and called it good. And it was.

We had so much fun. Not in the on-our-honeymoon-in-the-Bahamas way, or the viva-Las-Vegas way, but in a holding-hands-while-taking-long-walks, eat-chocolate-in-the-bed-together-while-watching-movies getting reconnected kind of way.

We both love to read and it was simply decadent to snuggle up next to each other in comfy chairs overlooking Blue Mountain Lake while indulging our inner bookworms. My pick was non-fiction essays and his was a book on chivalry that I’d given him as one of his ‘10 favorite things’.  (Here’s an aerial view of the lodge and cabins from the Mt. Magazine website. Gorgeous.)

Speaking of his ‘10 Favorite Things’ — in honor of our 10th anniversary, of course — I highly recommend trying it for your next big-number anniversary. It was super fun going around town picking out the presents. I doled out the goodies all weekend. They ranged from small things like his favorite candy to a nice new backpack for weekend trips.

Since he’s a lover of words, too, I also wrote him a letter sharing my “Top 10 favorite things about you”.

On Saturday we broke from our romantic mountain pursuits to drive into Paris, the little town about 20 miles from Mt. Magazine. Now we can forever tell each other in corny voices, “We’ll always have Paris.”

Getting back to reality after our 10th anniversary weekend has proved difficult. I still like to close my eyes and imagine we’re back on the “island in the sky”. Time on a mountaintop can help any marriage weather those potential “valleys”.

Shannon Magsam is mom to 8-year-old Ladybug, married to Ladybug’s aforementioned awesome dad, John, and co-creator of nwaMotherlode.com. To read previously published installments of Life With Ladybug, click here. Leave a comment if the mood strikes. 

Last night’s episode of The Good Wife started off with a bang. Alicia’s husband, Peter, who has just returned from jail to live with his family (while hooked up to electronic monitoring) looks in his wife’s bedside table for a letter opener. Instead, he finds a strip of condoms.

Peter looks a little concerned, but goes back into the kitchen to continue working with his team of lawyers on how to handle his upcoming retrial. He later goes back into the bedroom to puzzle over those condoms some more. After all, he’s been away a long time, having been jailed for corruption and involved in a very public sex scandal.

His suspicious mind isn’t helped by the tweets of an anonymous Twitter user, upriser7. The upriser seems to know a lot about the Florricks’ situation, from the fact that they’re sleeping in two different bedrooms to the gossip that “St. Alicia” is not only sleeping with her boss, Will, but she’s using him to get promoted.

Of course, Alicia is most definitely not sleeping with Will (yet?) but Peter doesn’t know that.

That night, Peter doesn’t confront Alicia with the condom questions right away; instead, they talk about the fact that the tweets are coming from their house and from their children’s school. Creepy. Given the fact that the kids have hidden some secrets from their mother in the past few months, Alicia and Peter feel they need to ask their offspring if they could be the upriser. After all, it has been a trying time for both of them with their dad in jail and their mom working all hours.

They agree to talk to the kids the next day, then Will calls (remember, it’s late at night) and asks Alicia to come back in to work. It’s legit, but Peter doesn’t know that.

Peter decides to ask about Alicia about the condoms. He goes through a variety of scenarios he considered as to why she might have them (that aren’t related to her using them). He concluded that they couldn’t be hers because she has an iud.

“I had it removed,” she stated, neither confirming nor denying her condom usage or ownership.

But she did pour out her purse as if to say, “I have none in here!” Peter responds by saying he’ll never touch another woman, since he knows he really has no moral high ground to stand on.

Alicia says “trust me”. Then Peter asks her not to go to work (I suppose he thinks Will was making a booty call). Alicia responds by defiantly grabbing the condoms, saying “Trust me” and walking out the door.

When Alicia confronts the kids the next day about whether they tweeted or not, Grace denies being upriser7 and Zach gets all defensive. Grace proclaims that it must be him since he and Becca (his girlfriend, of sorts) talk that way “all the time”.

Ahhh. So it’s Becca, the high school girl who’s sleazy and seems to be toying with Zach. Mr. Gold, who’s on Peter’s legal team, goes to the high school to have a chat with Becca. He lets her know he knows about the tweets and warns her against typing anything else about the Florricks. As Becca sees a police car cruise by on campus, she screams loudly for “help”, hoping to get Mr. Gold into trouble. But the policeman knows Mr. Gold and Becca admits she’s not in any danger.

To underscore his earlier warning, Mr. Gold tells Becca, “If you tweet, I will know you tweeted. Have you seen Drag Me to Hell? It will be just like that.”

Next we see Becca, she’s seducing Zach outside his apartment door. Judging from the comments, they’re considering having sex. Zach tells her to hang on, runs into the apartment and looks through his mom’s bedside table. No condoms to be found. He leaves with Becca anyway and we’re left with the feeling that not having protection won’t stop them. Yikes.

As always, there was an exciting case going on throughout the show — not just Alicia’s personal woes. One of the threads is how the law firm where Alicia works is really low on funds and could fold. At the end, partners Will and Diane decide the firm will have to seek a third partner to help keep it afloat.

Previews from next week indicate that Peter finds religion and Alicia finds her lips on Will’s. We shall see on Tuesday.

Wanna score some serious “You rock, mama!” points with your kid? Or maybe even your husband?

If so, read on. Today we’re giving away a Planet 51 Playstation 3 game ($49.95 value)! Thanks to Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for offering us this fun game to give away to a lucky nwaMotherlode.com reader! The Planet 51 game is based on the movie, which officially lands in Earth stores today on DVD and Blu-ray.

If you don’t have a Playstation 3, I’m sure you can think of a friend or family member who would be thrilled to receive this game as a present. Even if our own kids call us meanies, we can always aspire to be the “fun aunt”.

About the game: The Planet 51 game is an entertaining mission-based driving game with various characters from the film available to play. The game allows audiences to immerse themselves into this amazing vibrant world and experience the fun Planet 51 has to offer!

About the movie (available starting today in stores): When Chuck the astronaut (Dwayne Johnson) lands on a distant planet filled with little green people, he’s surprised to discover that we’re not alone in the galaxy. But he gets the shock of his life when the residents of Planet 51 mistakenly believe that his presence is the start of an alien invasion of the human kind! Luckily, Lem (Justin Long) quickly realizes that Chuck is friendly and makes it his personal mission to help him return safely to his ship.

How to enter: Easy, as always: you just have to write a comment! (Click on the orange “comment” button at the bottom of this post.) We like to mix it up a little with the comments — since it’s so much fun to see what other moms write — and today we’re going with “guilty pleasures”.

Since playing video games kinda falls into this category once you become a grown-up, we want to know about those things you enjoy but might not typically admit. It could be reading romance novels while eating a king-sized chocolate bar in the bathtub, watching Gossip Girl on the WB or … well, you tell us! Click the orange comment button and post your answer. Or send it to us by email at giveaways@nwaMotherlode.com.

We can’t wait to read your guilty comments. Thanks again to Sony for sharing the Planet 51 love with NWA!