Date Night

We have a busy, jammed packed, crazy lifestyle. I love every single minute of it, but one thing we've always agreed on is that we will never make the other person feel like they are unimportant or taking a back seat to everything else. The biggest thing that we've always done is tried to make sure we have one night a week set aside as "date night." We do get into slumps where it just doesn't happen, but for the most part, we're pretty good about it.

Lately we've kind of re-invented date night a bit. We've felt like we've gotten into a boring pattern of going to the same restaurants over and over again and when it comes time to say "so where do you want to go this week?" it becomes more of a battle or challenge and somehow ends up not seeming as fun. So we've fixed this in one simple way - because we're on opposite weeks of payday schedules, the person who's week it is to get paid treats to dinner (yes we have shared accounts, but I think you get the idea here) and the person "treating" has to choose where we go.
I tell you since we've started that -date nights are becoming more fun and exciting again. We're challenging ourselves to pick new and different places and I kind of like the element of surprise in not knowing where Nate might pick when it's his turn. And I can be kind of indecisive sometimes but this is forcing me to have no choice but to pick something when it is my turn. So it's been a very good thing for me so far!

When we got married we had a wedding shower where people were encouraged to write down little words of advice on recipe cards that were given to us (along with actual food recipes too) and there was more than one card that said "date your spouse" or something along those lines as advice. I like dating my husband! It's one of the many ways we keep our marriage fresh and vibrant. I highly recommend it.

To those who are married and read the blog - do you have date nights? How do you keep the spark in your marriage?