Married with Children - date idea #5

I think it is super important to take the time to learn to enjoy the things your spouse enjoys. Paul gets off easy as my enjoyments are cooking and photography - who wouldn't love all things related to those subjects?!

Paul has done an excellent job at learning and enjoying my interests and it really makes life FUN that my husband enjoys the things I do and I can sit down and talk to him about what spices would go well with what kind of meat and I can show him the newest things I have learned with my camera and he gets it. In fact, he gets it so well a DSLR camera for him is next on our list of things to purchase. I LOVE that!!

I have a bit more of a challenge though, as Paul's interests are working out and other rugged, manly activities like mountain biking, kayaking and um. Skydiving. Not that he's done skydiving yet. But he plans on doing it and he thinks I am going to do it with him =)

Before we were married I had never touched a free weight, grunted in public under the strain of something heavy (actually, I had never grunted in public period.), or felt good about being sweaty.
A couple of months after we said I DO Paul signed us up for a gym membership and he introduced me to this strange world of physically exerting yourself by your own free will.
For the past 4 years I have shown various degrees of interest in working out with him. It was easy when we didn't have children - we could go to the gym whenever we wanted (now we need to wait for the nursery to be open!) and I wasn't in a state of constant exhaustion.
I didn't workout through either pregnancy and I asked Paul to leave me alone about working out for the first 6 months following the boys births, and he did.

Oddly enough, over the past few months of working out with Paul - and specifically the past three weeks where we have been serious about working out - I have truly developed an enjoyment for working out.

The point of this all-over-the-place post is this: take the time to learn your spouses hobbies and interests and learn to enjoy them. It's taken me 4 years to say that I truly enjoy working out - and I never would have thought I would say that I enjoy it! Start out by participating in your husbands hobbies because you enjoy being near him and doing things with him, and ask him to join you in your hobbies.

And for a specific date-at-home-while-children-sleep idea: One day Paul came home with a rose and, once the boys were down for a nap, told me we were going to spend the afternoon taking pictures of the rose with military/manly things. It was a cute idea and a fun at home date!
This is my favorite picture from that date:


I blew it up and framed it for his office.

What hobby of yours or your husbands can you enjoy together,and turn into a date?

Married with Children - date idea #4

Before Judah was born we did (at least!) weekly dates to the coffee shop. We would take our favorite magazine, book or game and sit with each other. Sometimes we had deep conversations, other times we were lost in our own books. It was cozy. And I think it was Paul's favorite date activity.

We have tried to recreate that same environment here in our home. We buy nicer coffee, brew a pot and sit and relax with each other over a cup of coffee. Or Chai tea :) Chai is a favorite here too.
We've tried to make our back porch a cozy place to sit - special lighting, over sized blankets- and that is where we take our cups of coffee to.

It's not that sitting with cups of coffee on our back porch is a special date activity, but it's recreating a date that we use to love doing that is special.

What was your favorite pre-child outside the house date? Is there an easy way to recreate that in your home to surprise your husband?

Married with Children - date idea #3

We use to get Netflix and I would keep a list of "date movies" in the que and add them to the top of the list when a date night was coming up. We don't do Netflix any more, but we do use Redbox if we are wanting to pick up a movie to watch. Redbox makes it easy to look up and reserve a movie on their website so you aren't stuck standing at the box trying to decide what you want!

We also watch a few TV shows together. We don't have cable tv, but as soon as we can after the shows air we watch them online together.
It's nice having so many shows available to watch online, and while we have very different tastes when it comes to what we enjoy watching we have found a few that we both really enjoy.

Married With Children - date idea #2

We love games. love.love.love them! I am always on the lookout for new 2 player games for us to play. From board games to card games to computer games to Wii games - we enjoy them all. We enjoy the competition and will usually play for a couple hours at a time.
We usually make a snack to go along with our game and if it's a board or card game we sit on our back porch to play.

We go through phases as to what our "go-to" game is, but some of our favorites have been:

Skipbo
Chess
Sudoko - we print them and race each other
Mastermind
Carcassonne
Wooly Bully
In a Pickle
Connect 4
Wii Sports
Mario Kart (Wii game)
Pool (from Yahoo games)
Poker (from Yahoo games)

What are your favorite 2 player games?

Married With Children - date idea #1

Paul and I both enjoy being in the kitchen together and one of our frequent date nights is to cook a nice meal or snack together. We feed the boys and put them to bed a bit early, pour ourselves a glass of wine and then work on our meal together. It takes a bit of pre-planning as I try to have a lot of the meal prep done, but it is a relaxing and fun activity to do together and then we get to sit down and enjoy eating our meal together!

One of our favorite things to create is sandwiches and then grill them. We mix various seasonings with sour cream, use different meats and cheeses and put it all between two pieces of bread and put it in the George Foreman grill. Pizza is another fun thing to make together, as well as onion rings!

Games!

Lest you think we are total Video Game junkies I thought I'd share one of our current favorite non-video-game games, Skip-Bo!

It is a really fun card game, sort of similar to Dutch Blitz and yet totally not like Dutch Blitz. It's like the calm version of Dutch Blitz.

I have such good memories of this game - growing up I played it a lot with my family and then when I was in Nigeria living with my grandparents we played it every single night. Every night. I was there for like ten months. That's a lot of Skip-Bo. And yet I still love the game, which has gotta tell you how great of a game it is, right?!

I bought the game for Paul and myself ages ago but I don't think we ever played it together. And then Judah somehow got a hold of the box and we were randomly finding Skip-Bo cards around the house, so that ruined that game!

But then a couple weeks ago I found the box on clearance at our local grocery store and bought it for us again and we've been having so much fun with it! We play a couple evenings a week and (please don't tell my Grandma) it makes me feel old. But it's fun and bonding and I usually win. :)
So what's not to love about that?! Even if it does make me feel old.