Date Night!!

Ryan and I have tried to be very committed to having a weekly date night, because we think it's a really important investment in our marriage. It's something I learned YEARS ago when I was in high school and babysat for a family that had a hard and fast commitment to date nights at least every other weekend. I thought they had one of the best marriages I'd ever seen, and I believed part of it was because despite busy schedules and 3 kids, they were firm about time away together on a regular basis. So I love it that we do this in our own marriage!

I don't want you to think we go out every week and blow tons of money on meals and each other {partly because that's not true and partly because I don't want to make this practice look like something you can't do if you don't have a lot of money!}. The first weekend in January, our "date night" was our 92 county tour day. We did it during the day on Saturday. The second weekend, we were SO POOPED that our date night was splitting a Subway $5 footlong at home on our couch and watching movies we'd recorded. See? Doesn't have to be extravagant!

And this was our date from this past weekend!

We'd had a long week, and were so looking forward to our date night! So how much did I love the text I got at work Friday afternoon that said, "Excited to take my wife out tonight!" {Melt.}

We changed clothes after work and piled into the car to drive to Anderson. We really like Anderson...for no good reason! We had a gift card to Ruby Tuesday, so that was the first stop on our trip. DINNER!!

We ended up filling up on the salad bar and bringing our actual meals home with us - but that's okay! That's what microwaves are for!

Then we headed out for a little fun shopping. We had a few things we wanted to get with our Christmas money, and I had a couple of things I needed for work...so the first stop? Target!!

I thought Ryan should get this shirt, since he says this all the time:

{He did not get the shirt.}

Since we were on a date, this seemed appropriate:

 {In case you can't see it...it says "You Complete Me."}

And then my husband bought me a bikini so teeny!!!!

Well. We didn't actually buy it. But I modeled it:

Because...yeah...that's the only kind of bikini THIS girl can wear.

In other shopping adventures, we ran across this "not to scale" model desk. Since my new desk at work has been accused of being...ahem...super size...I thought I'd see what it was like to work with something smaller:

After we finished all our shopping, we made a little zippity doo dah through the Starbucks drive-thru for a traveling home treat:

And that was date night! We had so much fun looking at crazy stuff in the stores, trying on clothes, doing some car karaoke and just being together!

And lest I fail to report all the nice things Ryan did for me on our date...he also bought me some flowers!

WHICH...


Someone took time to stop and smell:

Thanks for date night, Baby!! Had so much fun.