Date Night #1!

This Christmas, I gave my hubby a thoughtful gift.  Time with me!!  I gave him 12 handmade cards, each with a “redeemable for one date night” note on them. 

We are to use one each month to guarantee at least 12 dates this year.  The entire year of 2010 held only a handful of date nights for us.  Probably a whopping 3 nights total.  Now, we did make up some time by taking a weekend away on our anniversary in August (Thanks, Aunt Beth for watching Jack that whole weekend!).  But this year I really wanted to invest more time in our marriage.  With a thriving 2 year old begging for our attention, Rick’s job and hobbies pulling at him, and my love for all things on the internet taking up my time, making time for each other isn’t something we end up doing a lot of.   I plan to change that by making  him offering him a chance to go on a date with me once a month.

This month we chose to go to a new restaurant just down the street from us. It’s a small Italian place that some friends of mine recommended. While we enjoyed being out –alone- together, and the atmosphere was pretty quaint -though we do prefer booths to tables- we didn’t exactly love  the food.  It was good, but as we were walking out, we said,

“That was pretty good.”

“Yeah, I’d come back here again'.”

“But I wouldn’t order that dish again.”

“Me either.” 

So, did we like it?  I’m not really sure!

After dinner, we decided to drive across the intersection to a tried and true restaurant for dessert.  Bob Evans.  Nothing fancy, but it was YUMMY!  We never get to eat dessert there, because we’re always too full from our meals.  It was the highlight of our date night, for sure! Just look at these:

They were as good as they look.  We might have to make all of our date nights end at Bob Evans.

Since we’re trying to get all our carbs eaten in just one hour (thank Dr. Atkins), we had a lot of time left to spare, so we drove to the local mall and walked and talked for the last hour or so of our date.  I drug Rick through the kitchen gadget stores and he drug me through the sports stores to look at guns and ammo.  When we arrived home, our babysitter (first ever that wasn’t a family member or close friend) said Jack did great.  He cried a little when we left and again when he had to go to bed, but other than that, the night was successful for him too!

We’re encouraged for our next 11 dates.  We don’t want to spend this much every month, so we’ll try to use family and friends who would like to spend time with Jack for an evening or afternoon, and we’ll probably change up what we do when we go out.  We’re thinking next month we may sit at the library and work on stuff we’ve been ‘meaning to get to.’ 

What ideas do you have for creative dates?  We don’t want to get in a rut, so what else could we do?  Any recommendations?