Date Nights!

Who doesn't love date night?!

Unfortunately date night doesn't come often enough in our house.  I think we've been out maybe 6-8 times since our little guy was born.  He's now 8 months!  Yeah, it's definitely time to get out more.  We try, but it's tough.  First of all, we don't have a lot of babysitter options and not to mention, it can get expensive to go out all the time.  We love our time together as a family and love cooking at home, so we don't mind.  But when we do get a date night away, it's seriously so much fun!  We then talk about it for days and always say we can't wait for our next date night.  :)

I was starting to think of different date night ideas that we could do at home.  Our little guy goes to bed at 7pm every night, so if we aren't going to bed at 8pm (sigh), I thought we could try and do some of these things with the time we do have at night.  I know it's not the same but sometimes doing something to make it seem like a "date" makes all the difference!

Spending time together at home, even when the kids are in bed, can make all the difference for your marriage!

A cute idea would be using a mason jar and craft sticks.  You each write a bunch of ideas down on the craft sticks, throw em in a jar and pick one each week.  It can be anything, just as long as it's spending time together! 

Here are some ideas that I came up with for the hubby & I...

1. Cook a late night dinner together

2. Make a fire out on our patio and enjoy a glass of wine or if it's cold, hot chocolate

3. Cinema night - Grab some popcorn, favorite snacks and snuggle up on the couch (In PJ's of course)

4. Play a board game

5. Have an ice cream sundae night

6. S'mores out by the fire

7. Get late takeout 

8. Write out a bucket list together

9. Play a prank on someone (This makes me laugh just thinking of the possibilities)

10. Make a nice dinner together and go enjoy it on the patio (So excited for this now that the weather is warming up)

11. No technology night - Turn off cell phones and TV.  Just cook dinner, have a couple drinks and talk!

12. Food themed night - Mexican, Italian, Indian, Chinese...pick one! For example: Mexican night...make some tacos or nachos, have coronas!

13. Comedy night - Grab a DVD of your favorite comedian and get ready to laugh

14. Have a fondue night

15. Scour YouTube for hilarious videos (this can be so fun)

16. Go to bed early!

17. Wine, cheese and fruit picnic in the living room

18. Watch your wedding video

19. Have either a "Mom's night off" or "Dad's night off" night.  Whoever has the night off gets to pick what they want the other to cook for them and then just gets to veg & relax

20.  Have a naked day...ok ok just kidding!  Although, I guarantee if you asked your husband what he wanted to add to the list, he'd throw this in there!  ;)

What are some of your ideas?!  

Menu Plan Monday

Happy Monday!  

This came across my Facebook feed and made me feel extra positive today! :)

Here's what we have cooking in our kitchen this week:

Monday:  Carnitas - This past weekend we had some friends over, and the hubby smoked a bunch of pork for BBQ pulled pork.  Needless to say, we now have tons of leftovers that we get to enjoy over the next week.  Tonight we plan to use some of the leftovers for Carnitas.  Corn tortillas, pork, lime, cilantro, cotija cheese and my hubby's homemade guac.  Yum!  I'm sure we will have these later in the week too!

Tuesday: BLT Sandwiches with Broccoli Grape Salad - We love to use sourdough bread for our BLT Sandwiches.  The Broccoli Grape salad is also one of our faves, especially in the spring/summer months.  A couple of our friends turned us onto this.  We do without the pecans and cut back on the red onions.

Wednesday:  Chicken Spaghetti - Something new we're trying.  ;) Looks yummy!

Thursday:  Leftovers - Carnitas again or maybe Chicken Spaghetti since it makes so much!

Friday: YAY!  Would LOVE to be able to get out.  We will see!  

What's on your menu for the week?!

A little thing called paranoid

I have always been an extremely cautious person.  I tend to be paranoid at times and also fear of bad things happening.  I'm not entirely sure where this all came from but I've been this way for a long time.  It's an awful feeling.

This brings me to a story.  Many years ago, I was living with my boyfriend at the time and he was out of town for work.  I hated being home alone.  Well, this one night, I kept waking up because I thought I heard something.  This went on and on all night long, every hour.  All of a sudden 5am rolled around and I heard noises coming from the kitchen, noises that sounded like someone walking in the house and I even swore I heard a drawer open.  I literally talked myself into the fact that there may have been someone in the kitchen.  Keep in mind that we had two cats at the time and we lived in an old house with hard wood floors that creaked.   Did I ever even think it could have been my cats running around?  Nope.  My mind was sold on the fact that there was someone in the house.  It was so bad that I sat in bed for a couple more hours and was late to work that morning because I was too scared to get up and look.  Is that not ridiculous?!  Of course no one was in the house, and I can guarantee it was just the cats.  Once I finally got up, I even locked the bathroom door while I showered.  I'll seriously never forget that morning.

That's me in a nutshell.  I'm definitely not like this all the time but from time to time I tend to get a little ridiculous.

I got pregnant with my son in November of 2012 and the fear, and paranoid thoughts set into an ultimate high.  I even read in my "What to expect when you're Expecting" book that it's normal to get fearful & paranoid about things that you normally wouldn't.  If it wasn't bad enough already!  I would have my husband check through the house, I began locking more doors than I already had, including our bedroom door.  It was bad but I couldn't help it.  I became insanely protective of the little life in my belly!  

Flash forward to July when my son was born.  I of course became instantly protective of him, so I'm sure you can imagine what it was like when I moved him into his own room.  He slept in our room for the first 4 months, so, it was easy for me to lock our bedroom door.  Well, when he went into his own room, I wanted our door open, his door open because I wanted to be able to hear him.  This was hard for me, because I was so used to our bedroom door being locked.  I am sure every Mom has strange nightmares once in awhile about something happening to her child.  Or maybe it's just me again.  :)  I love that little guy so much and all I want to do is protect him!

I still ask my husband to check the house for me from time to time.  All of a sudden I'll get scared from a noise and I'll ask him to check rooms and closets.  A couple months ago I was so scared for some reason, I even had him check the attic in the garage.  Yes, I'm a total weirdo.

So here I sit at 3am, blogging about being paranoid...not able to sleep because I woke up to noises in the house, which were most likely the dog, or the ice machine on the fridge, or Marshall stirring, or even my husband snoring.

Happy Thirsty Thursday!  I sure am looking forward to a glass of wine tonight!