in 2018 i . . . made date night a priority

Date night has always been a struggle for me and Russ, even before Ada was born. We've gone through spurts of date night, but nothing ever sticks for long. Part of the reason for this is that, for a long time, I felt like dinner and movies shouldn't count as dates because they were so "normal" and things that we did every day anyway -- date night should be something exciting and special, every time. Another part of the reason is that we could never nail down a way that worked for us to switch up who plans. Trading off weeks didn't work, me planning most date nights didn't work, it just didn't work. Add in a baby and it's been even harder to try to make things work!

Enter Erica.

Erica is one of my good friends. I should do a blog post all about why Erica is great, but for now we'll just talk about her date idea that just resonated with me, and which has been working really well for two solid months now.

She said that she and her husband trade off planning date night each month. In each month, they have a 1. movie date, 2. game date, 3. dinner date, and a 4. random date.

It's funny because as I mentioned above, movies, dinner, and even games are all so "normal" and I've even considered them "boring" dates. But a big reason for that is that it seemed like movies were the default date, so we did them every week. By having the aforementioned setup, it guarantees only one movie date per month -- totally different than a movie date every week. And by having one random date each month, there's still time for those special, creative dates, but you only have to plan ONE of those every other month. Again, totally doable.

There's also space in this arrangement for variation.

Movie night could be at home or at the theater. It could be a themed movie night (eat nachos and watch Nacho Libre, for instance), or you could even do a twist on it and make a mini movie!

Game night could be alone or with friends. It could be board games, card games, a murder mystery game, video games, or you could even play a sport or do an escape room game.

Dinner can be made at home, you can get takeout, or you can go out to eat. Some extra guidelines Russ and I put in place are that dinner should either (for now at least) be somewhere new, or somewhere that's a favorite place we don't get to eat too often. That makes it feel a little more planned and out of the ordinary. We also try to make conversation a priority on these dates -- stay longer at the restaurant and just keep talking.

The wildcard date can be anything! It can be super out there, or it can be something simple like a walk or going bowling.

Another key to making this date night thing work? I created an Instagram account solely dedicated to date night. It kind of works as an accountability partner, except the partner is me. It's like -- I have to make sure I get a date night picture posted every week! Not for my followers (haha I only have like 20, and it's totally fine because the account is just for me), but for me. I want the perfect date night record (😂) of a date every single week. So far, so good! If you're interested in our mostly-normal-but-very-consistent date nights, you can find us on Instagram @rushleydatenight :)

I may still need to do what I actually wrote on my 2018 list, which was to "make a date night list/box/jar," because that will be helpful for planning my wildcard dates, and even for spicing up my movie and game night choices, but I do definitely feel like I finally found some solutions to our dating dilemma, so I'm counting it :)

How do you make date night work?

PS
Prior to having the brilliant idea of using IG to record our weekly dates, I started to do it here in a draft post. So here are some of our dates from earlier in the year, before we switched to the four set plans method. We actually did pretty good for a while, but then I started counting things that just sort of happened rather than which were planned in advance, which I think is a key ingredient of a date. But regardless, here are some of our dates from the beginning of the year.

January:

• 5 - Took down Christmas tree and had a discussion based around Christmas questions we each came up with prior to the date
• 12 - Kalynn & Jake's wedding! 
• 19 - Built and installed additional shelves in the pantry 
• 26 - We saw The Greatest Showman and loved it! We were singing it the rest of the weekend :)

February:

• 2 - We were supposed to have our book club discussion, but neither of us had finished the book yet. However, I didn't really get around to planning anything else, so I think we ended up Just Dance-ing for a little bit.
• 9 - Book club discussion of our January book, 168 hours.
• 17 - Watched Home Again and asked some questions Russ found online.
• 23 - Watched Friends. We were kinda bad at planning ahead this month.

March:

• 2 - Planned our upcoming trip to Texas, ate donuts, and watched an episode of Friends.
• 9 - 
• 17 - Double date with my sister and BIL in Austin! We ate dinner at Gordough's (AMAZING!) and walked, talked, and laughed together :) 

We had a bit of a break, in which we usually watched Friends or a movie on Friday/Saturday nights, but without making it special in any way.

May:

• 5 - Sarah's wedding!
• 11- We re-took the five love languages quiz and discovered our languages have changed a bit. We discussed a little bit about what we each need to feel connected. 
• 14 - Out to dinner at Art City Trolley for my birthday
• 19 - Russ taught me how to use the lawn mower, and I mowed a lawn (ours) for the first time in my life! He weeded while I mowed. There wasn't a ton of interaction between us, and yet it still felt like a great date because he taught me something, and we simultaneously worked toward a goal.

June:

• 8 - Family date to Art City Days. Mostly we just ate fair food :)
• 9 - Anniversary! Watched our wedding videos and Black Panther
• 16 - One parade home sans Ada and an outdoor movie night (Jurassic Park) with Kalynn, Jake, and a bunch of their friends