First off, thank you so much for understanding the need for a break last week! Everything just seemed to go haywire, and I needed some time to catch up. But I missed you guys! My week felt like it was missing something the whole time, so I’m so happy to be back!

Given that tomorrow is Harrison’s birthday, and my post will be fully dedicated to my little guy, I’m posting ”Let’s Look” a day early! I love this link up. A fun little prompt sharing a little part of our lives. As usual, the link-up is hosted by two of my favorite blogs (Shay @ Mix and Match Mama and Erika @ A Little Bit of Everything). Before we get to this month’s prompt…a look back at what we’ve looked at this year:

• In February, I shared what we ate in a week.
• Last month, I shared a look back at college life.

And today, we’re talking date night. You guys, I love a good date night…or date day. 🙂

Here’s the guy I go on date night with for the past 10 years…

A couple of things about this topic as I thought about our seasons of life.

-1- Before kids, we rarely called anything a date night. I mean, we were always hanging out with each other. Either with friends as a couple or grabbing a bite to eat on Friday night.

-2- Since having kids, we’ve gone through seasons of date nights. We’ve had seasons where we were great about planning date nights. For about a year when we had just Harrison, we went on monthly date nights, and took turns planning the activity, lining up babysitting, and surprising the other.

We’ve also had seasons where we go four or five months without a date night. And I’m totally ok with that. Date nights are a nice plus. I think the real work and connection comes in regular communication with each other. To me, date nights are just an added bonus to do something fun.

I only say this because I felt the pressure and like something was wrong with Nathan and myself when we weren’t having regular or weekly (which, you guys, sounds like a dang dream) date nights. But as is often the case, comparison is the thief of joy.

-3- You make what you can work. In this season of life, the date day may be my most favorite of all. With two little kids and two full time jobs between Nathan and myself, my absolute favorite type of date is a text at 3:30 saying, “Meet for happy hour and queso at 4?” And we grab an appetizer and a drink for an hour or so before picking the boys up from daycare. The plus side of this type of date is that I then get to go love on my boys and rock my baby to sleep that night. It is the best of everything, in my opinion.

-4- We make it a point that the boys hear that Mom and Dad are going on date night. When Nathan and I did our pre-marital counseling, one of the questions we were asked is what do we want to carry forward into our own relationship that we saw our parents doing. And Nathan said he always remembers his parents being good about making time to spend with each other, and that being a part of their rhythm of family life. So, when we go on date night, we celebrate that with our boys. They get to hang out for the evening with someone more fun than their parents (usually Aunt Ashton), and we go spend some time away from being parents.

So now to some more traditional questions about date night…

What we do varies. Post-COVID era in particular, what qualifies as a date night to me is wide open.

Like I said above, sometimes it’s a quick afternoon happy hour meet up.

Sometimes, it’s a more formal drinks and dinner. Food pretty much is always involved, because it’s our favorite way to spend time together.

Occasionally, date night involves friends and other couples. Given that most of our couples friends are in a similar stage of life as us raising little kids, couples date night is usually planned out months and months in advance due to needing sitters, scheduling around kid activities and vacations.

We generally take turns with planning. While we used to be on a very formal schedule of planning date night, nowadays it’s really up to whoever has the time or an idea of what they’d like to do.

And now I’ve inspired myself to go put another date night on our calendar. 😊