go out on "date nights" with my spouse on a regular basis

at a new outdoor shopping center in Dayton on Saturday. It was really wonderful to sit out on the patio, listen to live music and sip iced green tea. You forget that occasions like this provide opportunities to reconnect. We talked about a little bit of everything, and it was nice just to sit for a few hours with nowhere to go, nothing to stress about. Just hangin’ with my favorite person.

We had an overnight date to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, ND. Medora is a strange little town in the southwestern corner of North Dakota that was founded by a Frenchman in 1883. He thought he’d build a little town dedicated to his wife (hence, Medora, ND) and proceeded to build a chateau overlooking his new minions in town. Three years and a crushing financial defeat later, Frenchie packed his bags and moved his bride back to the other side of the Seine. He left behind a virtual ghost town, scarred with the remnants of an abandoned meat packing plant and a handful of stores. A mere twenty years later, when Teddy Roosevelt was passing through, he fell in love with the region and decided to be a crusader for the environment and conservation. The result was Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
We stayed at the Rough Rider hotel, one of the few remaining buildings left over from the founding days of Medora, and we spent a day and a half driving the park’s auto tour, and hiking the back country. It was amazing! We saw buffalo, wild horses, the cutest and fattest little prairie dogs…not to mention remarkable scenery. I’ll be posting more pics on here from the trip.

last Saturday. I found out from one of my classmates that a small international grocer here in Minot made sushi on Wednesdays and Saturdays. My husband and I LOVE sushi and there isn’t a darn sushi joint in town. So, Saturday I surprised him and took him to United Pantry, the little market, and we had some spicy tuna and salmon rolls with a big pot of tea. It was wonderful! We had good food, good conversation, and it cost so little (in effort and money!) to rekindle our companionship and mutual pleasure in one another’s company.

Our date nights recently have consisted of packing up the car, our luggage and the animals with about an hour’s notice and driving eight hours through the night to catch a flight out of Minneapolis to go home to Alexa. This streak of romance has included a recent overnight stay in the bunkbeds at the USO Lounge at the Minneapolis airport (with oh-so conveniently separated rooms for men and women), driving through a raging winter storm that resulted in a 40 mph slide and spinout into a ditch, sleeping in twin beds at the Ronald McDonald house while Alexa was hospitalized across the street, many nights of eating peanut butter crackers and diet coke for dinner in a dimly-lit hospital room, and fighting with my mother-in-law, who insists that chemotherapy for my stepdaughter is futile, and maybe we should just make Alexa “comfortable” for the time being (nevermind that chemo is what will save her life…).
Ah, yes, the romance department has been put on hold recently, in favor of character-building exercises. Oh well, we always said we never wanted an ordinary life.

especially since after this week, we’ll both be working full time and going to school. I think it’s so important to continually rekindle the ties that bind us together, and I’d like to try having dates again, maybe once a week.