I’m not a huge New Year’s resolutions person. I do generally try to think of a few things I’d like to change/improve upon in my life at the beginning of each year. But a lot of things on my list of goals for 2016 are to just continue doing some of the things that worked for me in 2015.
One of the biggest resolutions Gerrit and I made together last year was to go on dates all year, once a month. It sounds like it would be easy to do since we have built in family babysitters in town, but with so many other things happening in life, some months ended up being more challenging than others (and there were a couple months we cheated and counted something as a date that really wasn’t exactly what we had in mind when we set out do to this).
Setting the intention to go on dates all year was probably one of the best decisions we made last year. With a toddler and busy lives it is so easy not to make time together a priority…because we live together and spend time together every day. They were moments to slow down and listen to each other without distraction and have fun together without also having to parent.
Some of the things we did:
1) out to dinner (obviously)
2) bowling (we hadn’t done this in YEARS)
3) wondering through our local artist community/gallery
4) a concert (technically not a date by ourselves because we went with friends, but it was our first overnight trip away from Evelyn so we counted it)
5) lots of late night trips to Target and other stores I wanted to wonder around without a baby in tow
6) putt-putt golf (Huntsville did a downtown putt-putt course which we did last summer)
7) a whole weekend in Asheville
8) a football game (which again, we probably shouldn’t have counted, but that was a busy month)
9) breakfast date and Christmas shopping in December
There are a few months we missed (I think in November we also counted a wedding rehearsal dinner because that was a crazy month and it was the first time we actually had to pay for a babysitter).
Anyone have any other date ideas? It’s a new year and I’m looking forward to another year of dates with Gerrit.
And in case you’re wondering, here are some of my other resolutions:
1) read more books than I did last year
2) read more short stories and poetry
3) keep prayer-doodle-journaling. I started inspired by this (her’s are way different than mine) and it has turned out to be exactly what I needed