Fun Dates, Part 4

I promise today is the last day of my trip down memory lane of fun dates! Thanks for reading along, and thanks, Tamar, for the vote of confidence that I should write more on this topic! I think writing a book on dates would be SO FUN!!! :)

If you're a few days behind, you can scroll back and look at Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of last week to read my first ideas. The ideas, to be fair, are not mine at all. I read this post about great anniversary date ideas, and it inspired me to see how many of them we've tried! So today wraps up my memories of these fun dates we've tried. 

31. Explore the Local Scene    

Well, when you live in a tiny town, it doesn't take long to explore the local scene! We're still working our way through Fort Wayne, as time permits. But I'm choosing to interpret this one with the many fun dates we have taken in our home state of Indiana! I know a lot of people think Indiana is a real snooze-fest, but it's NOT! There are so many fun things to do here, and we are slowly working our way through every single county. We've done about 1/3 of them and have been slowed down by the pandemic and by our work schedule. But we have loved all the fun places we've visited on this project and all the coffee shops we've tried! And we've done a handful of these on anniversary and birthday trips. (Yes, I know I referenced our county tours in another point, but I can use it twice!) 

32. Start a Tradition

YES!!!!!! I hope you all do this (or will start). We actually have several fun traditions we do every year, and I love them.. Every year, we read the letter we wrote to each other last year and then we write a new one for the following year. We keep them rolled up in bottles, and it's so fun. (We wrote the first letter on the morning of our wedding, while sitting in the sand on Siesta Key Beach.) We also watch our wedding video every year and look through our wedding album. But my favorite tradition is the one where we recreate the same 10 wedding pictures every year. I can't wait to see what this looks like a few years down the road!

33. Hit the planner.

This suggestion is for those who can't go out for their anniversary and offers the suggestion to plan ahead for a time when you can go on a trip! We've always gone away for our anniversary, BUT we almost always have the next vacation marinating in our minds. On our way home from our anniversary trip, we'll dream about where we want to go for our birthday trip. And on the way home from the birthday trip, we frame our anniversary trip. You see how it does. Even though I do the bulk of the trip itinerary planning, we do the location dreaming together! 

34. Enjoy some games and trivia.

We have never gone out to a game or trivia place for an anniversary, but we do love playing car games! In fact, one of my favorite memories throws back to when we headed to Florida for our wedding. We knew we had soooooooooooooooooo many hours ahead of us for both the drive down and back, so I planned a ton of car and trivia games to play as we drove. My friend Sheryl from WBCL even helped me put together some of the games so I wouldn't risk knowing any of the answers. It was so much fun! I blogged about them several years ago, and you can read those posts here and here, so if you need some ideas...!

35. Plan a family adventure.

This idea was offered for people who aren't able to get away alone because they have kids who need to come along. Obviously that isn't our story, but I do love the idea of still going somewhere and just including everyone!

36. Set up a personalized scavenger hunt.

We haven't done a personalized hunt, but we have enjoyed a few scavenger hunt dates! There was the downtown Indianapolis scavenger hunt that I mentioned in an earlier post, but we also did a really fun scavenger hunt around Matter Park in Marion once! We had the best time! (Our trip to Richmond, IN, for our most recent anniversary was also basically one giant scavenger hunt, and it was so much fun!) There are tons of scavenger hunt list ideas online if you need some inspiration! 

37. Make a slideshow of your life together.

I'm not super proficient in slide shows (although I did make a quick, decent show for our WillowBridge birthday party yesterday) but we sure do have a collection of scrapbooks of life together! And oh, how I treasure them! I ADORE going back through them and seeing the stories and pictures of the memories we've made and the life we've built. Whether you like video or albums or slide shows...I highly encourage you to do SOMETHING that shows life together. It really will become a keepsake! (Side note: last year on New Year's Eve, Ryan showed one of our tenants the one-second-per-day video of our year. She has mentioned it over and over this year and recently she asked if she could come back this year on New Year's Eve to watch this year's one-second-per-day video. It's not even of WillowBridge. It's just of our life! But she loves seeing the memories, and that makes me happy.)

38. Make an anniversary music mix.

Ummm, Ryan? This one might be up to you. I am not sure this one is in my wheelhouse. But it could be fun to talk about all the songs that would be in our music mix if we had one. I don't think we've ever tried that!

39. Volunteer Together.

We've never done this as an anniversary event, but we have done it! Most of our volunteering has been done at church (where we've done all kinds of things) but the one that popped in my head first was the time we went to pack meals for Feed My Starving Children. We did this with our Sunday School class when we lived in Marion, and though the day turned out pretty rough for me, it was a good thing to do together!

40. Learn something new at home.

We actually did this last year, right before the pandemic started! We did a salsa date, where we stayed home, learned to make homemade salsa...and tried to learn the salsa dance. The edible salsa went much better than the dancing salsa. But it was so fun!!

41. Visit a gallery or museum.

While we are more likely to explore outside than we are in galleries or museums, we have been to some of each and have more on our list for future travels! We'll throw the museum memory back to our first birthday getaway, when we went to the Creation Museum! (The Ark was being built at that time, so we still have that one on our list!) 

Thanks for reading along! This has been fun to write!

Surprise Date!

If you heard the podcast yesterday, you've already heard a little bit about my surprise date this past weekend, but I know some of you have asked to see pictures, so here you go!!: )

First, let me say to any guys who are out there reading: TAKE YOUR GIRLS ON SURPRISE DATES!!! It really is one of the sweetest things Ryan does, and he has always been very good at it. {He planned our entire first date all by himself, and I had no idea what we were doing until each stage of the day came along.}

All I knew, when I got up last Saturday, was that we were going on a date somewhere in or near Indianapolis, we needed the weather to be nice, and I should wear comfortable shoes, because we would be doing a lot of walking.

Ryan fixed our breakfast and made our coffee and off we went!!

On the way, he finally revealed the date. We would be doing a scavenger hunt of downtown Indianapolis!

We made our way to Monument Circle...ahhh the memories of our first anniversary trip! We came down this very road that afternoon, and I have a picture much like this one from that day!

Ryan found this idea on Groupon, purchasing one from Big City Hunt. I'd never heard of this site before, but basically it is a site where you can do a hunt in a number of big cities {see what they did with the name, there?}, and Indianapolis is one of them. The entire hunt is done through your phone. You don't go to any physical shop in the cities to check in. It's all mobile.

So we headed to the check-in point, which was a church on the Circle:

The hunt works this way: you receive a question/clue on your phone, along with multiple choice answers. When you have the answer, you enter it and move on to the next clue. With each clue, you move around the city, learn fun bits of trivia, and improve your teamwork!

I don't want to give away all the answers, but I'll show you some of the fun pictures we took that day. {Note: it's not a photo scavenger hunt. You don't have to take any pictures at all. But I don't even understand a day without pictures.} Some of these, we just took for fun. Not all are in relation to a clue.

{The grouchy faces were moments of clue struggle. LOL.}

We just so happened to end by a Starbucks. So it only seemed appropriate to celebrate.

After we finished our date, we headed to Costco. {I knew about this part of the date before we went.} We'd never been there before, but we had a gift card and wanted to check it out!

We had been told their food court had delicious food, so that's where we ate a mid-afternoon lunch. Ryan's sandwich was MASSIVE!! Mine was good - although I skipped the bread. {Didn't want to. Needed to save calories.}

On the way home, we needed more coffee, so back to Starbucks we went...and we got our coffee for FREE! They said we waited in line too long. We didn't think so, but we also didn't argue!

And because we raved forever on the podcast about the size of the mums we got at Costco, I thought you should see what I mean!

Thanks, Ryan, for planning such a fun date for us. I had a great day! It was such a treat to have you all to myself for a whole Saturday, and I loved what you planned!

Freshen Up...Your Day Trips

If you've hung out here very long, you know that Ryan and I love a good day-trip adventure. We love them because they're a relatively low-budget way to do something out of the ordinary, spend time together, and make memories. And we love all those things.

Here's the great news, though: you don't have to be married (or in a relationship at all) to take day trips. If you enjoy doing things on your own, you can certainly plan a trip for yourself, and the best part of that is, you can make ALL the decisions. You could also put together a trip with some friends, with your siblings, or maybe even take the kids in your life and have a fun day out with them!

Maybe you do this sort of thing already, but you need some new ideas, because you tend to go to the same places over and over. Or maybe you never go anywhere because you don't know where to start. Either way, hopefully this little list will help you brainstorm!

1. Join up with a bus trip group. 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Confession: I've never done this. And it may not be for everyone. But it might be a good fit for you.

Before I was married, I belonged to a credit union that offered trip opportunities to its members. You had to pay for the trips yourself, of course, but someone from the credit union did all the planning and arranging. You just paid, packed, and showed up. Sometimes the trips were full vacations (a few even went overseas!) but sometimes they were bus trips for a day. I remember looking pretty seriously at one that was a bus trip to Chicago for a day of Christmas shopping. I'm not a city driver, so trekking to downtown Chicago was never gonna happen for me. I thought it would be fun to pay the fee, ride the bus to Chicago, enjoy seeing the city decked out for Christmas, get some shopping done, try some new restaurants, and ride back home.

I don't think it's uncommon for banks and credit unions to offer a service like this, so check yours out to see if they have one! Sometimes churches arrange trips like this, and travel agencies may also be able to point you to groups in your area who plan these outings.

(Ryan and I actually think this would be fun to do for a living. Take groups on day trips!!)

2. Check out a state park!

(You can upgrade that to a national park if you have one near you.)

Ryan and I love visiting state parks whenever we have the majority of a day to devote to one. We love hiking the trails, seeing the natural beauty, and soaking up the chance to be "alone" together, even though there are usually many other people all around us doing the same thing.

We pack a picnic lunch, take the camera, and have a fun day. Different parks offer different things, so we adapt our visits to whatever they have to offer. We've boated on lakes, taken a paddleboat around a pond, climbed dunes, hiked cliffs, checked out towers, walked through caves...you name it!

It does usually cost to get into the parks, but the price isn't bad, and we stay for the day so we can maximize our entry fee. Some of our favorite memories are from state park visits! (Ryan asked me to be his girlfriend during one of our hikes, and we planned our wedding in Brown County State Park the day after we got engaged.)

3. Try a Big City Scavenger Hunt.

We did this a couple of years ago, and it was so much fun! Ryan arranged the date after finding it on Groupon - and it was a total surprise for me. I had no idea what we were going to do until we got there. This is the way it works: you purchase the clues to the hunt and when you're ready to begin, you activate the clues and you have an allotted amount of time to find each location. We did the downtown Indianapolis scavenger hunt and had a blast. (You can read about that date here.) There are many city hunts, though, and you can find the complete list here. Even though we don't live in Indianapolis, we're pretty familiar with the downtown area, and even so, it was a fun hunt that taught us new things. So your own city could still be fun, even if you live there!

4. Scour Only In Your State.

If you haven't visited the Only In Your State site, you're missing out! I refer to this site all the time when planning our county tours - especially if I'm not very familiar with that part of the state. This site gives you a glimpse into fun things to do, unique places to eat, and not-to-be missed sights to see in every single state. I've found places I've never heard of hiding in articles on this site. Like this one. (AHEM: Ryan!!!!) The covered bridge dinner series? I could go on with the examples, but I think you get the point. :)

5. Have A Friend Help.

This past Christmas, we gifted our family some day/weekend dates. We planned the whole thing from start to finish, gave them the money to buy tickets and meals, and we had so much fun watching them unwrap their date days. It may have been the most fun we've ever had putting gifts together! If you have a friend who particularly loves doing this sort of thing, ask him or her to plan a day trip for you. Set a budget and see what you end up with! (Be sure to specify if there's something you just can't do. Like skydiving!)


Hope that helps freshen up your day trips! Have some fun exploring and trying new things!!

The Comedy Continues

 Ready for some more (!!!) stories from our trip? Our Saturday in Florida was full of them!

It was another drizzly, overcast day, but we were determined to make the best of it!

I had planned our trip so completely, and this day began with one of my favorite ideas of the entire trip. I found that there was a farmers' market nearby, and I thought it would be SO much fun to go to the market, do a scavenger hunt, and see what we could find for $20 to eat for lunch. I had gotten on Pinterest at home and found a few market scavenger hunts, picked my favorites from each, and made my own. I hoped we could find some great wraps or crepes or something for lunch.

Wellllllll.... (!!!)

We arrived, and this was the extent of the market:

Given that we were in a large city, I did expect something a little bigger! But it was not bigger. It was this. No fresh flowers. No live music. No old couples holding hands. No kids on their dads' shoulders. The scavenger hunt finds were slim indeed. 

Know what else they didn't have? Prepared food. So unless we wanted to chomp on an eggplant and wash it down with a jar of homemade spices, we were out of luck. Scavenger hunt and lunch foiled in one fell swoop. (!!!)

But I do have new sunglasses!

The park where the market was located did have some festive trees decorated by different groups, so we had fun looking at those instead. (There were many more than what is pictured here, but you get the idea.)

Then we went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore to see if we could find any treasures. We thought maybe Floridians had good cast-offs. Well, they do, but they have wildly high price tags to match. We found a simple chandelier (wooden) for sale for SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. Used!!!! Eeek! (!!!)

Since we needed a new lunch plan, we went in search of a Chick-fil-A. Ryan knew he had seen one on our route. We headed that way and managed to drive right past it (!!!). Before turning around, I checked to see if there was another one ahead. There was! So we kept driving. When we arrived, we found it was not a Chick-fil-A at all, but a Chicken Salad Chick! 

THIS was a happy accident. We learned about this restaurant earlier this year, because my friend Pat's mom LOVES IT. There's one north of Indianapolis, apparently. I love chicken salad, so Ryan said we should probably just stop there. We did, and WOW. It was so so so good. If you have one around you and haven't been, you should give it a try!

Ryan got the buffalo chicken salad sandwich and the chicken artichoke soup. I had to SIT DOWN when he told me he got that soup, because I've tried to get him to eat artichokes in things forever and have only been successful once. Get this: he liked it!!

I got a scoop of the original chicken salad and a cup of fruit. Both were delicious. As was the pickle and the tiny sugar cookie. I ate every single bite of everything. I don't usually do that. 

It totally made up for the market fail. 

Then we went to an outdoor mall to look for murals and fun stores. Ryan found a pontoon he loved. 

And then he found the price tag.

We had lots of fun!

After our time of fun, we came back to our Airbnb. We planned to watch the sunset, but it wasn't visible, so we got ready for our next adventure. I'd found that there was going to be a tree lighting/fireworks show/Santa sighting at Baytowne Wharf, which was just down the road from our Airbnb. I had previously picked out a place for us to eat, and we headed over! 

Got to our dinner destination... (!!!!)

So.....we just walked around and took pictures. 

We walked out on the pier to see the boats in the marina:

And found more photo opps...

The tree lighting was supposed to start at 6, so we found a spot on the green and waited. We finally heard a voice over a loudspeaker, and he said he was Santa, and we should look up to see him. There was a zipline right there, so I presumed he was on one of the zipline platforms, but alas, the spotlights didn't seem to be working, and it was already dark, so finding him was...hard. (!!!) We did finally spot his red suit on the platform across the water, and he announced he was going to zoom in. Except it didn't work. (!!!) So he tried again, and it didn't work (!!!). FINALLY, on the third try, we saw the red suit bouncing on the line across the pond below. If you use your imagination, you can see him landing on the platform here in this picture. 

As if by Christmas magic, he was almost immediately on the stage below, even though I distinctly saw his red suit still climbing down the zipline stairs! Ha! He gathered the kids around him, and they sang some Christmas carols.

They did a countdown from ten to light the tree, and right about eight, this happened. (!!!)

And then about one, this happened. (!!!)

Santa and the crowd chanted "Light that tree" for the longest time, and nothing happened. So they tried a second countdown from ten (!!!).

And then, suddenly, the lights came on and stayed. We just had to laugh. Because...of course! The lights were actually very cool when they came on, because they were synchronized to music and made a great show.

Then there was a fireworks show, and I do love fireworks.

We left after that to go back to our condo to scrounge up some dinner and rest for the remainder of the evening. 

Fortunately, I must say, this pretty much ended our (!!!) moments for the trip. There were a few more sprinkled throughout, but nothing insane like the first few days. Even the ones we did have just became funny. I have more stories for next week!