Happy Monday, friends! Hope you had a great Father's Day weekend celebrating those special guys in your life. We did lots of fun things for Kevin and were excited to celebrate him. I thought I'd share some of the ways we've been working on our marriage to let each other know they're important, they are a priority and time together is special. It's takes effort on both of our parts to make these little things happen, but seeing your spouse feel loved, appreciated and special makes it all worth it.
SWEET TREAT.
I saw this idea from another blogger and knew I had to copy it. They make time for a sweet treat together after their kids to go bed. We don't do this every night, but I've been trying to do it several times a week. I will bake something, pick up something at the store or we'll have a little ice cream together. We catch up on each other's days, talk about the highs and lows of our days and just enjoy a little bit of peace and quiet. My Meijer store has the yummiest prepared desserts and they come in packages of 1-2 slices. So I picked up this brownie cheesecake on markdown to surprise Kevin with one day. He loved it and appreciated that I'd planned something fun for him.
PLANTS
I love potted plants and planting our landscaping. Kevin loves the way it looks, but knows it's a lot of work to make it happen. So for Mother's Day we went to Lowes a couple of times to pick out flowers, soil, etc to do some planting. The kids helped and now we've got the prettiest pots on our porch, deck and our landscaping is coming together nicely.
SURPRISE DATE NIGHT:
I planned a surprise date night from start to finish when Kevin's semester was over. I did it all in secret and then texted him an invitation the afternoon of. He was SO SURPRISED! I never do things like this so it was a great reminder of how much he appreciates things like this. We dressed up a bit, left the kids with our favorite babysitter and headed to a fancy restaurant for dinner. We took our time, enjoyed all the courses of food - drinks, apps, salads, bread and shared the main course. It was so much fun :) It did feel slightly strange to be at a nice restaurant, eating quietly and not having to share or worry about the kids making a mess.
The food was AMAZING - lemon, blueberry acai mule, crab cake, bread, feta salad, steak and sides. I think this place might end up being our go to fancy date night spot!
FRO-YO DATE:
We headed to a local spot to split some fro-yo. It was delicious and I think we'll bring the kids with us next time.
MOTHER'S DAY:
Kevin isn't super crafty, but he knows that I appreciate a good craft. So every year for Mother's Day he helps the kids stamp their hands in my card. It's so sweet and I just love it. I also know how hard it is to stamp hands so I avoid doing it with little kids :)
A few other things we've been doing together:
GOING ON WALKS IN THE EVENINGS
The kids are happy to ride in the stroller as long as we have snacks so it gives us an opportunity to catch up on our days.
PLAYING IN THE BACKYARD TOGETHER
The kids play and we grab a drink to sip while they are busy.
GRILLING
Kevin loves to grill. He's good at it and knows that it makes dinner so much easier for me if he does the main course. We had these delicious grilled chicken tacos recently and they were so good! Teamwork on dinner really does make everything go faster.
SURPRISE
Kevin stopped at the store and picked up some surprise treats for us to enjoy one night after the kids went to bed. We'd planned to watch a movie so he figured popcorn would be a perfect treat. Never mind the fact that the Jiffy Pop was a flop and it all burned to a crisp. Sometimes things don't go as planned, but I really appreciated his thoughtfulness. So we ended up eating ice cream instead. Worked out just fine and we still had a great time.
What fun things have you been doing with your spouse lately??
You guys are the cutest!! i love all of this! Marriage matters so much and it's important we don't lose that after having kids.
ReplyDeleteWhat sweet things y'all do for each other! Thanks for the inspiration, too:-)
ReplyDeleteLove all of these little things. Just last night the girls wanted to watch sing for the millionth time so we slipped out on the porch. I never thought of that as a mini date but I guess it kind of was. You are challenging me to think out of the box friend. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteLove this! You're so right - we have to be intentional with making time for each other and showing how important the other is to us. I love your dinner date idea to order all the courses and share the main. That's such a great way to have a luxurious dinner date without going away stuffed to the gills! :) One morning last week we had an unpleasant errand to run together, something we were dreading. Before we left I suggested we stop at Chick Fil A for breakfast after the errand was done. It gave us something to look forward to, and we never get to have a breakfast date. I would normally have wanted to rush back home and get on with the day's schedule, but I'm glad we took the time to do something fun!
ReplyDeleteWhitney @ Come Home For Comfort
I know we are so lucky to have monthly date nights but we make them a priority. Our marriage is so important to us so that means we don't skip the chance to spend time with just us. Kid-free.
ReplyDeleteSo, so cute! We try do to more date nights especially since we have family nearby who can watch the boys more easily. We are going to Mexico again this summer for 5 nights, just us, and I can't wait!
ReplyDeleteThese are great ideas. We really don't surprise each other ever haha.
ReplyDelete