Last night we went on a date. Yay! Our first date of 2019. Hopefully the first of many. In twenty-four and a half years of marriage we have never been good at having Date Nights. That might come as a surprise since many experts say that is one of the keys to staying together. And we’re still together. But we’ve never been very good at it.
It’s not that we don’t like spending time together, it’s just hard to schedule. And it’s easy to let it get pushed down the “list.” While we think dates are important we’ve never been willing to miss other things like our kids’ sports and activities. So rather than having a standard date night once a week, or once a month, we’ve always tried to date a few times a year. Kinda lame.
If we are going to spend this year amplifying God and amplifying everything good, we have to amplify our “dating” life. God wants us to spend time together. He said it isn’t good for man to be alone.
So last night we did it. We dated. We had the girls make their own dinner and we went to dinner and a movie. We went to a local restaurant with a happy hour so we could try many dishes without spending a fortune. So over a giant nacho, blackened fish tacos (yum!), and chicken quesadillas we forgot about the world for a moment and focused on each other. You know what happened? We talked. About real life. We laughed. We learned about what each of us was currently working on – him with his new job, me with my blog/website. We caught up. We connected.
Then we saw a movie. We sat in an almost empty theatre. And we held hands. I fed him frozen Junior Mints. We lifted the armrest between our seats and snuggled in close. We breathed each other in and the weight of the world out. It was good. It was fun. This dating thing has to keep happening.
Because I am who I am, I’ve already started researching ideas for more fun date nights. Pinterest has a lot of lists and ideas. I tweaked some to make them work for us.
- Thrift store and ice cream. Go to a thrift store. Each person gets $20 to buy a complete outfit for the other person. Outfit must be worn to the ice cream shop and for the remainder of the date.
- Faux adventure. Create a photo album for an event or adventure that we never really took. Maybe we go to the zoo and make it look like an African safari, an art museum to make it look like we took a European vacation. Whatever. Just take lots of pictures and make it fun and funny.
- Drive to the beach. Arrive just in time to watch the sun set (might have to wait until summer for this one) build a bonfire and roast some marshmallows.
- Date night at home. Make a ton of popcorn, buy “movie candies,” gather a big stack of blankets and pillows, maybe even build a fort or a nest, and binge watch something on Netflix.
- “Chopped” kitchen home date. Pull 4-6 items from the refrigerator and/or pantry and prepare a meal for the other person. Get creative. Maybe even vote on them.
- Penny Date. We’ve done this one before and it was so fun we’ll definitely do it again. **My advice for anyone trying it – make sure you have a full tank of gas. We were in the middle of nowhere counting the miles to the nearest town and hoping we would make it. Then again, that was part of the fun.
Comment below with your favorite Date Night Idea.
Unmastered 
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