Thursday, September 22, 2011

Surprise Date Night {Try New Adventures Thursday!}

It was a lot easier to go on dates when my mom lived a quick 5 minute drive away. She would even randomly call and say, "Don't you need to go to the store by yourself or something? I can watch the baby!!" {Um, hello! I'll take you right up on that, Mom.}

Nowadays it takes a little more planning and forethought to schedule a babysitter (but thankfully we have a church with willing volunteers!). Andrew is so busy that the babysitter part is normally where he gets hung up in date-night planning. It had been about a month since we'd been out by ourselves, so I started formulating schemes to implement #4 on my 27 before 27 list:

Take my husband on a surprise date!

Options

I arranged to swap babysitting with my neighbor (who-hoo!) and came up with a small list of "Date Night Choices" which I put in an envelope for Andrew to open at the beginning of our date.

Amazingly, I managed to keep the secret (Gosh--that's harder than I thought! I automatically want to tell him everything!) and he was so pleased when our neighbor showed up to watch Squishy. *score*

Our sweet neighbor gave us permission to stay out late (gee, really?!?), so we opted for a combined option of frozen yogurt at TCBY and a movie.

Frozen yogurt

I forgot how much I love TCBY!! Peanut butter + cake batter frozen yogurt = YUM. And we had coupons, which makes everything happier.

We watched The Help (good choice) and had fun holding hands during the movie. *sigh*

Date night

We almost went through the whole date forgetting to snap a picture, but we grabbed this one in the parking lot before we headed into the house.

Date nights are a breath of fresh air to our marriage! I am not very savvy with in-home dates, because it's sooooooo easy to get distracted by things that need to be done. Not to mention I'm not normally my most energetic self after the kiddo is in bed. So we really appreciate the times when we're able to get out. The surprise element made it even better.

What is your favorite thing to do on a date with your sweetie? Have you ever taken your spouse on a surprise date?
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Link up your adventure below! It's easy--just link up your adventurous blog post, link back to Alicia's Homemaking, and then visit and comment on someone else's adventure! Our twitter hashtag is #TryNewAdventures.






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6 comments:

  1. Sounds like so much fun! We saw The Help too. Loved it. Glad you got a much needed date night.

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  2. What a great idea! My husband isn't very spontaneous, but he might like an unexpected night out. Thanks for continuing to inspire us!

    P.S. My adventure this week is shamelessly borrowing from your applesauce post. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

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  3. I'm glad you got a night out. Froyo! Yum!

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  4. Mmm, frozen yogurt! I love it with gummy bears and fruit. That makes me miss California.

    Love you Alicia.

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  5. That is so sweet! I think my favorite date night choice is exactly what you guys did...frozen yogurt and a movie. :) I'm so glad you two got to have a date night!

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  6. I love the envelope idea....deciding what to do is half the problem...I think I might try that :) For home dates...we did this a lot in Korea...a special food item helps it feel like a "date"...home made chocolate fondue in the crockpot or take out Chinese...the sugar in the chocolate wakes you up...and a game like scrabble or cards or maybe check out a wii from the library (Mario cart is amazingly challenging). A game keeps me more awake than a movie. Another option is Saturday afternoons while William naps...you might need one of those pumpkin lattes if you skip your own nap but at least you'll get to bed on time that night. My favorite home date was pre-children and when I came home one day John had squirt guns filled with ice water...our apt maintenance man who was outdoors thought we were crazy I'm sure.

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