Date Night

* photo taken by me on our date tonight ... dinner at BJ's *YUM* and a movie!

Oh, what would we do without date night?!? I am lucky that we have a regularly scheduled date night on our calendars ... it is often one of the few times during the week that we get to sit with each other to catch up and take a break from our rat race!!! It seems that the older our kids get, the more active/busy they become - which obviously filters down to the amount of time that Steve and I have together. I feel like most days we are running opposite directions in our responsibilities between home, kids' schedules, and church duties. He walks in the door and I walk out. I get back from running the kids to and from activities and he's on his way out to a meeting ... you get the idea.

We've been part of a babysitting group for years now - since before Cougar was born - where we swap every Friday. One couple watches all of the kids and the 3 other couples have 4 1/2 hours of *FREE* child care!! When it's our turn we have 16 kids {including our 4} at our house. When we drop off we get to do whatever our little hearts desire!! We've done lots of dinner & a movies, game nights with other couples, shopping, sporting events, cleaning, painting, DVR night, temple trips, etc.

Tonight was bittersweet because it was actually our last night as part of the group *sigh* With Brinley about to turn 12 we are able to call on her for a few hours so we can sneak away for a date! With Steve's work/church schedule it was making our babysitting weekends (when we had everyone here) a lot tougher on our family. We would babysit 16 kids on Friday, Steve would work early (7 AM) on Saturday, I would do the running to 2 different games (and often birthday parties or other errands) by myself, Steve would be in meetings most of the day Sunday {really - starting at 7 AM}, and then he would go into work early on Monday. It was making for super long and hard weekends so we knew it was time to make some changes. We will now be opting for more "family nights" on Friday where each child will take turns picking our activity and we will get in more of our dates on Saturday night. It feels so strange to be at this "turning point" in our lives as our kids get older, but we will continue to treasure out date nights ... they are literally the glue that holds us together at times and I'm so grateful for a husband who thinks they are just as important as I do!!