Date Night on a Dime

Just about any married couple you talk to will tell you that date night is important.  We started out our first year of marriage determined to do date night often. We set out every Thursday as our dedicated date night. We switched off from one week to the next with who chose what we were going to do. A lot of them were simple such as browsing the book store together. There is a quaint little book shop in downtown Spokane that we love. As the years passed and the kids came it became harder, and we were also much happier to just stay at home after long days of work. And of course as the kids came and there were house projects to do, the times got few and far between. When we moved away from family it got ever harder. We often would just stay in for lack of funds to pay a babysitter upwards of $12 per hour on top of dinner and a movie which would already be $50-80. It just seemed to make sense to put the kids to bed right on time and watch a movie or something at home. We did do some childcare swaps, but we lived 30-45 minutes from most of our friends, so that made it tricky.

Now that we are back in Spokane I love that we have a few family members that enjoy doing date night swaps with us. They often are overnight from Friday at 5 pm until 10 am on a Saturday. It's so nice to have a long stretch of time together and we don't have to fret about breaking the bank. Our kids also enjoy when it's our time to work the swap, since it's pretty much a sleepover for them! I'm pretty frugal minded and as a mother of three who stays home--you've got to learn to give and take to make it all work. I love special occasions to spend a bit more money, but I personally would rather go out more often and make it frugal, so that I enjoy myself and not wonder how I'm going to rub two pennies together to get gas the next day. But I do think it's really an investment in my relationship with my husband as well to be able to let go of the cares and just enjoy being with him-To talk about us and not just the kids. We really enjoy just being in our house together alone. It kind of feels like old times and we joke that we need to practice it for the day when we are empty nesters!

My husband is really busy and he occasionally plans a date night, but I do most of the planning. I find it my challenge, really! Here is a picture from our last date.

 So...here is me encouraging you! Celebrate marriage whether you are married and need to plan some time away or you are not married or without children and could offer your time to watch children for a couple who you know would love some time away.

First stop...dropped the kids off!

Second stop...Pita Pit! I know, not a fancy restaurant-but we love their food. Yum, yum.. Of course, I had a buy one get one free coupon. And we drank water. In and out of there for 7 bucks.

Third stop...Stand up comedy. For just $2 each we went to a stand up comedy show at Whitworth College. This is an example of how things don't always pan out. The show was short-30 minutes, which was fine because it was horrible. It was a student who was doing his senior project. We didn't know him, just saw it advertised on the Blue Door Theater website. He only talked about himself and his life story, which proved to be pathetic and depressing. The only story that was remotely funny was his last story that had to do with diarrhea.  To add to that we were literally the oldest people in the theater. Not kidding! We toughed it out since we were in the second row, and laughed about it all the way home.

Fourth Stop...Ah, home. No kids. And free.

Fifth stop...Saturday morning we headed out as early as we could stop hitting the snooze button and drove to the south hill to have coffee and breakfast. I had recently won a gift certificate from our insurance company for being the first one to write in and answer their newsletter question about leap year. Yay! Those pay off. We had never been to Black Tie Coffee, it's a great little place.

Sixth stop...Trader Joes. We walked around and read food labels. I know...thrilling! We are making changes to our shopping habits and we enjoyed seeing what they had. We left with a bottle of Merlot wine for later at just $2.49 for a bottle. I was unsure that wine at that price could taste good, but I think it's one of my favorites! 

So there you have it, Date night on a dime! Total spent was $17 for a 17 hour date night.