The big highlight of our last week was our first date night in what seems like a long time!!!

The biggest advice we hear from seasoned parents is to prioritize quality time together. For us, this was a little easier back in the baby days when all Baby R would do is sleep and when it was easier for our families to help out. These days, Baby R is a giant ball of energy and we are just so exhausted by the end of the day that we don’t really want to do anything. There’s also the issue of childcare. It’s hard to justify paying someone to sit in our house to “watch” Baby R while she sleeps at night. It’s easy to see why this is the biggest advice parents have shared… because it takes SO. MUCH. EFFORT. ENERGY. AND. MONEY that it’s easier to not do anything.

Fortunately, there is another couple in our church who also have a baby around Baby R’s same age and who also live just a few blocks away from us, so we’re trying out a date night swap! Once a month, one couple will go out on a date while one of us goes and sits in their house to “watch” the baby. Then another night that same month, we swap! So far, we’re liking this arrangement!

For our date night, we went out to Santa Monica pier. We got some churros, went on the Pacific Wheel (ferris wheel), and spent the rest of our time at the arcade. We had soooo much fun! We’ve forgotten how underwhelming the Pacific Wheel is but it was so vibes. And as usual, our time in the arcade flew by. We always have so much fun playing all the games and trying to win as many tickets as we can. We still wonder how people earn tickets in the thousands… do they just spend a ton of money? While it was a nice time together, it did feel a little forced and a little awkward. It was like we were a little rusty being together alone… doing something that wasn’t watching TV. And it felt like we were doing date night for the sake of doing a date night. But by the end of the night things felt natural again. And we ended up having a great time! Sometimes you just gotta go for it!

We’re excited for future date nights! We have sooo many things we want to do! Dine in and enjoy a hot bowl of ramen, eat at a leisurely pace in a restaurant, go mini-golfing, go running together, do something we haven’t done before…the list is never-ending!