Go on a "date night" at least once a month

The King and I is showing from May-June at the WH dinner theatre. I’m sticking this here so I don’t forget about it (and remember sometime in August when it’s too late). I love the movies, the original with Yul Brenner is my favorite but Jodi Foster does good, too.

We need to plan a date night and buy tickets!!

Evening Shows: Thurs-Sat, Dinner at 6pm / Show at 8pm
Weekday Matinees: Wed or Thur, Lunch at 12 noon / Show at 2pm
Sunday Matinees: Lunch at 1pm / Show at 3pm

Dinner tickets: $42 per adult

Well, everything went pretty much as planned. We got a little bit of a late start, but nothing to stress over.

Dinner was incredibly delicious! We ordered items from every course and took our sweet time, savored every morsel and enjoying good conversation. I think we were at the restaurant about 2.5 hrs.

We spent the rest of the evening just casually exploring the city, stopping at a few places that seemed interesting and doing a little shopping. We drove through the downtown club area, which had music spilling from every street corner, enjoyed beers at an old Irish pub, and browsed around at a specialty food store.

The last place we wanted to go, an overlook that has gorgeous views of the city, was already closed for the night. But no biggie, it’ll be there for another time! Then we had a leisurely drive home and stopped along the way for coffee. We laughed a lot and held hands.

We’re definitely going to do something next month for just the two of us. It was nice to be able to have an entire conversation without being interrupted! And to come & go as we pleased without worrying about keeping up with two active, curious kids. I love doing things as a family and I enjoy being around my kids – they’re cool people! – but I have to admit, it was pleasant and refreshing to have a break and to enjoy alone time with DH for an evening.

We told her personally several times, but I’m sending this out to the universe as well: THANK YOU to my sister for helping to make this date night possible.

• Comedy Zone in JC TN
  $8pp | Fri & Sat nights | shows at 8pm and 10:15pm

• Attitudes in B’burg
  $5pp | Wed nights | open 8pm, show at 9:30pm

• HHouse Trivia Night in B’burg
  Free | Wed nights | Three rounds starting at 7:30pm

• BR Parkway & MM Star

• Barter boxoffice

DH was the first to move on this goal—he asked if I would be interested in going to dinner at a restaurant I really like in a city about an hour from here. It’s been about 2 years since we ate there and he knows I’ve been craving this really fantastic chocolate dessert they have.

He suggested asking my sister if she could come to our house and watch the kids. She said yes! In fact, she said she could come early and stay late so we could relax and enjoy the evening together without rushing and maybe go see a movie, too.

How cool is that?!

I’m looking forward to dressing up and going out with my awesome husband for an adult evening! Yay us!

Two days ago DH and I had a long, emotional heart-to-heart talk about our needs and concerns. It was pretty indepth and I won’t go into the detail here but we did have a a list of mutual goals that came out of that conversation.

One of them is to have a “date night” at least once a month. I know people who do this weekly, but that’s just not going to happen for us right now. Reliable childcare, our budget, his schedule, and the other interests/activities we have make a weekly thing unrealistic.

But once a month is a good place to start, especially since the last time we spent time alone just for the sake of having an adult evening was years ago. Yes, grandparents have kept the kids for a weekend here and there but almost always because we had a project to accomplish that wasn’t exactly kid-friendly, like scraping and painting window trim. Or sanding joint compound and painting drywall. Sounds romantic, right?

So these date nights will be just FOR US. No scheduled projects or tasks that we have to focus on—unless it’s a “couples only” project ;)

I’m not sure how we’re going to figure out childcare arrangements. We normally don’t use babysitters—for one thing we can’t afford it regularly but also we’re picky about who we leave our kids alone with.

Living near a college town is good, because there is usually a lot of older teens looking to earn some extra cash by babysitting. BUT it’s not as beneficial as it sounds because just as soon as we get to know someone they’re graduating or transferring. Plus they can be a bit unreliable and hard to get ahold of—it seems like things “come up” at the last minute quite often and they don’t like giving up their Saturday nights, you know?

But I am trusting this problem to the universe! I know that if we want it enough and our hearts are pure (lol—I’m paraphrasing Joey on ‘Friends’) that we’ll find a way to make it happen.