a weekly date

About 4-5 weeks ago Teddy and I implemented something fun for our marriage. We will have a weekly date occur! The reality of our situation right now: we spend ALOT of time together already. BUT, it's amazing how you can spend so much time with a person and not talk about important things or even have a FUN day away from the house. Once we start having kids this is will get more difficult, but still needs to be priority. So we want to make it a priority NOW!

We thought it would be a refreshing thing to add into our schedule & our budget.

Truth is: our marriage is important. Our relationship is key. Marriage isn't easy & to keep it fun and exciting takes work.
Reality: We weren't making time to work on this part. We were falling into routine and missing out on opportunities to develop our marriage by continuing to date one another!

RULES:
1) $10 budget per week...period. This forces us to be creative! (if $10 isn't used, it can roll over to next week)
2) We take turns each week planning the date.
3) We will have a set day eventually. But our schedule is crazy right now, so we pick a day (day or night) that fits into our schedule.


What is neat about this too is the fact that as soon as we started to focus more on dating each other, the Lord has provided in fun ways to help stretch the $10 further.

What we have done:
-(Kelli) Ate sushi (Dad happen to give us $20 to go on a date, we added our weekly $10 & wala we can afford our fav date food!), went to a coffee shop to read our marriage book and talk, then went to a 9/11 memorial park to take a stroll.
-(Teddy) Split a burrito bowl at Chipotle (less than $10) and documentary event we got to attend for free
-(Kelli) Friday night homecoming football game ($5/person) & free museum (we love these!)
-(Teddy) Saturday day afternoon college football date at Buffalo Wild Wings. We got a coupon from Teddy's uncle for $10 free food. So we split 12 wings & a basket of fries and only had to spend $4...which left a great tip for the waitress equaling $10! After watching games we went furniture shopping for FUN. We love dreaming about our future homes and had a blast doing this! We had plans to go see the local hockey team play (free tickets as well) but stayed in to watch the Rangers game.

YAY for dates! It's been really fun so far & one of the most important things we budget for!
-Kells