April Date Night–in September

So we stopped dating each other. I love my husband, and he loves me, but we’re homebodies.  I had no idea this ‘one date a month’ idea was going to be so hard to do!  I’m sure I have new readers since January, so go check out our first date this year and see what I’m talking about. 

We’re not doing so well with our date nights.  The April ticket kept staring at us from the wall calendar, but we never planned anything.  (our March Date Night didn’t happen until July) It’s either because we’re too cheap to hire a sitter or buy dinner, or it’s because we’re too lazy to plan anything.  I bet it’s a good mix of both. 

For our April date (that happened in September), I decided to plan something really fun.  I found a site called Dating Divas that has a ton of great ideas for dates.  I found most of them to be more appropriate for extroverts or groups, but there are a few floating around their site for the introverts like Rick us. 

I decided to use their Bookstore Date idea. I printed their cards and didn’t tell Rick what we were doing until we were enjoying our elegant desserts (McDonald’s ice cream cones) in a romantic atmosphere (sitting in the truck in the parking lot). We really know how to do up date night right!

Once you’re in the bookstore, you search out certain types of books and bond over them.  It’s really fun.  Here is a BRIEF description of the tasks.

First, we found some recipes that we would like to fix for our spouse sometime.  I’m pretty sure we’ve forgotten all about these recipes and they’ll probably never get fixed, but it did prove that we know each other well.  I picked an enchilada dish for him and he picked a lasagna dish for me.

We needed to find children’s books that we remembered from our childhood, but that our spouse hadn’t read before. That was tough!  This is Rick’s book he found for me. 

And this is my book I found for him.  I couldn’t believe he’d NEVER heard of this book.  The whole time I was reading it, I couldn’t stop thinking about what a ‘downer’ this book is.  I’m surprised that I remembered it so well. 

Another thing we had to find was a book on somewhere we’d like to go someday.  I’ve been to Great Britain  before, but I’d LOVE to go back.  I do believe it’s my favorite place in the entire world.  I especially fell in love with Wales and all its castles.  (The castle on the Wales book I’ve actually been to).  .

Rick would LOVE to go to Ireland. He wants to see the country and visit the home of Guinness.

Finally, one of the tasks was to find a book that made you laugh.  That was much harder than I thought it should be.  After several failed attempts with some joke books, this book finally hit the mark.  It is so funny what text messaging autocorrect will create.  I recommend this book if you don’t mind a few bad words and you want a good belly laugh. 

This date was just what we needed.  It cost a whopping $3 for the whole evening (thanks to Gramma watching Jack), and it was a great time to just be together and reconnect.  Rick appreciated the thought that went into planning the date, and he said he’d try to plan the next one.  I’m not holding my breath, and I kind of already have the next one planned.  (Movie night to see Courageous).