Getting out of the house is good. Spending time together is good. Babysitters are expensive. What do you do?
We mostly end up going to eat somewhere because we can't think of much else to do. My husband really doesn't like watching movies (any movies or television or anything). But we don't go every week...
You know, it would be nice to set up a babysitting group (you know, where 3 families take turns watching the kids--2 nights off, 1 night babysitting), but that requires, you know...initiative.
We have date night every Saturday night. On the weekends they're here, our older boys watch the wee ones for a few hours. On the weekends in-between, we exchange babysitting with three other families. We really don't have a set rotation schedule--it's pretty informal. I actually think we end up babysitting more than our 25%, but I'm not about to start complaining.
For the past couple of months, we've been going to Central Market. It's an upscale specialty grocery with a huge patio area. They hire local bands to play for two hours. They grill burgers and brats and sell them for a reasonable price. We usually eat before we go, however, and just share a soda and listen to the music.
Sometimes we spend a couple of hours not buying anything at Barnes and Noble or Borders. My all-time favorite, however, is when we go to Victoria's Secret and she sneaks me into the dressing room for my opinion on how she looks in various lacy things. I'm pretty sure she's manipulating me into buying one of those little lacy things, but oh well, what's a husband to do?
-- Edited by Roper at 19:00, 2007-06-08
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The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life. - Julie Beck
There's a reason I married, and it wasn't because I liked dating... it was because it was expensive, humiliating and time-consuming... now with "WIFE(tm)" I'm free of all that bother, and have clean socks!
--Ray
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I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
Occassionally we have date night. Usually we are just so tired on Friday and Saturday evenings that we don't do anything. If we can get the inlaws or the outlaws to watch the little terrorists in the afternoon on a Saturday we can do something like see a movie. With the wife about 9 months along, we aren't doing much of anything right now except waiting for the great and dreadful day to happen. My brother and I both agree that there is nothing beautiful about child birth and that thing called Natural Child Birth, just doesn't exist.
Roper: For me, dating served a purpose that I no longer have. We're just not public people in the sense that we have to be a couple in front of others in the world... We're just not ones of great public shows of affection... It sounds somewhat unromantic, and we try to do things together and alone, but we also both love and cherish our children and were in our mid twenties when we started our family... so our focus is on them. Even when we go out we pretty much just spend the whole time talking about the children... or we think, "Boy the kids would love this..." and it's not that we're avoiding talking about ourselves, either. It's just that we're genuinely happy being the parents of our kids. Sometimes we'll do ward temple nights, which are great, but with baby Lionel nursing, it's tough to be away for too long.
We tend not to watch or do things that our children can't do along with us... just cuz...
When we're home or on a family trip, we still hold hands and hold each other... Something a lot of couples who've been married for 10+ years hardly do anymore...
--Ray
PS> I hated dating. I found it humiliating, expensive, and very inefficient. I know lots of folks who liked it, and I never got that at all. I got tired of the formalities, and the girls trying to be nice but with no intent whatsoever of furthering a relationship (not that I had a clue what that meant or could do so when I was younger). They want attention but then... nothing... I've tried to be positive about it, but I guess I enjoyed my childhood too much, cuz it was excruciating for me. I hated being seen in public with a date. I hated all that.
I was not ready to date in High School at all, and my highschool dance experiences were pretty much Napoleon Dynamite's... only I was never tall...
When I was 24 I decided I hated being alone and wanted to obey the commandments and get married. I prayed for a whole year to find the right girl. My dating was to serve the purpose of finding the one I could spend eternity with... and so I probably would make a terrible motivational "youth leader" with all the garbage they spew about how it's the best years of your life, blah, blah, blah... I'm living the best years now... and expect they'll only get better... my teenage years were definitely NOT my best years...
I am comfortable with my own family... but the activities that really helped me find my wife were not public dates, they were often evenings spent with her at either one of her family's house, or having a nice meal together with her roommates, or doing something with my family. It was in those settings I could see the diamond in the rough... not with costumes and makeup... Well that and the time we went to play Doom in the computer lab and she sat in a corner with shotgun and shot all my computer geek buddies as they ran by...
-- Edited by rayb at 10:28, 2007-06-09
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I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
I was a dating machine in college, but most of it was just a bunch of crap.
I also feel like these are the best days of my life so far... I have no desire to go back and relive high school or college campus type stuff. Kids are AWESOME!
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Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. -John Wayne
We don't have time or money to do a lot of stuff, but today we went to a steakhouse and a blues festival, but with the whole family. I won the tickets and the gift certificate to the steak house on a radio giveaway because I know who the 21st president was. It is nice to do stuff every now and then. Of course, now my wife wants to go a huge local rodeo that will start in a couple weeks. Unfortunately I can't win anything from that radio station for another 30 days.
-- Edited by arbilad at 00:01, 2007-06-10
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
rayb wrote:PS> I hated dating. I found it humiliating, expensive, and very inefficient. I know lots of folks who liked it, and I never got that at all. I got tired of the formalities, and the girls trying to be nice but with no intent whatsoever of furthering a relationship
Ditto. And I hated it even more the second time around when I was 34 years old. I'm eternally grateful that I didn't have to date 117 women before Sister Roper and I found each other.
But now, I sometimes like doing one of those intolerable "101 Creative Date Ideas" that I hated so much in college--maybe because I know how the date is going to end and I know that how bad I mess up the etiquette, she won't tell all her friends what a loser I am, and we'll still get to go out again.
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The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life. - Julie Beck
fiance and I are trying to do that already. This week we had the free root beer floats at Sonic, and we also spent an evening shopping. We were originally looking for his suit for the wedding (which we found and is absolutely amazing), but we ended up wandering around the mall and Target and just had a blast! And I just found out that the head honchos at my work actually buy tickets for the AA baseball team, that employees get for free, so we're pretty excited to watch the Sidewinders games!
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Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
— Oscar Wilde
roper- You seriously dated 117 women before you got married the first time? That's awesome! My goal was 100 people and I only got to 77. Shoulda' held out, I know. And yeah, there weren't near that many the "second time around" to find MrCoco. I was 31 then.
-- Edited by Cocobeem at 10:23, 2007-06-11
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Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. -John Wayne
Well, according to our new Stake President, all in our Stake will now make more of an effort to believe in and practice date night, not only with our spouse but with each child individually as well.
Dang, I don't think I even went on 117 dates in my single days, let alone date 117 different women. Gee, thanks for the unwanted distraction guys! Now I'm going to be spending time thinking back to my pathetic days as a teen and young adult and come up with a count on both! (hey, at least it won't be on one hand -- that is the number of dates! )
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It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
It's Coco's fault... She was the one who said you had gone out with 117 different gals, and well, since you have that robust manly Chuck Norris appearance, who are we to question the legend of your single days social life that precedes you!
Different girls I went on dates with prior to Mrs. Cat... High School = 4 (I knew of Mrs. Cat in high school, but we had no social interactions)... Freshman Year at BYU = 4 (if you want to consider only "formal" dates)... Post mission before meeting Mrs. Cat = 2. Mrs. Cat was the first I ever seriously dated (due to proximity to mission / the high school not being an RM thing before hand). Come to think about it, I was never terribly creative when it came to what to do when going on dates... that could be why we (Mrs. Cat and I) have typically never been big into it... it has always been like going out to eat or go see a movie or go shopping (or all the above).
If we're supposed to do these date night things, what pray tell are we supposed to do that will make it compelling for us to actually go do it? When ya ain't got the bucks to do stuff, what else is there?
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It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
Ahem... we don't like to medicate the children unless absolutely necessary. We prefer letting them fall asleep naturally... (and yes I did catch yer drift, but am choosing to it)
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It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
roper- You seriously dated 117 women before you got married the first time? That's awesome! My goal was 100 people and I only got to 77. Shoulda' held out, I know. And yeah, there weren't near that many the "second time around" to find MrCoco. I was 31 then.
-- Edited by Cocobeem at 10:23, 2007-06-11
Wow Coco- if it makes you feel better, my grande total of dating people is 4, non of which were longterm! There are 2 additional people that I can "rationalize" to make it 6. Oh well
Don't feel too bad, nita...before I got married I dated 6 other guys, once each: 1 inter-Seminary date where they just assigned all the kids 16 and up to someone else, 1 my Senior prom where I asked my friend's older brother to come with me (high school grand total: 2), 3 meals with guys I 'met' in a BYU chat room during a silly freshman chat room phase, 1 actual (what I would call a REAL) date when I was an RA with a fellow RA in a ward of lots of freshmen.
The funny thing is, I'd asked RA guy to a girl's choice dance, but he was busy, so I ended up asking my then-future husband, so that was our first date. Then RA guy asked me out for the REAL date later...probably because he felt bad having to turn me down the first time, but... Too late. Hubby was the only guy I went out with a second time.
I've only seriously dated my fiance. The guy who comes in second with number of dates will be coming back from his mission this month, and we were just having a good time. The guy I was actually semi-interested in will be comign back in September or October...and we just hung out a lot. I've always hung out with guys a lot, and many people consider the things we did dates (like they would buy my dinner when we were hanging out), but they never liked me and got really scared for awhile when someone called them dates. They are the ones I went to look for approval though, since they were such good friends, kept an eye on me, and were always worthy Priesthood holders when I needed them. Now I am trying to pay them back by sharing my free baseball tickets with them so they can find dates! ;)
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Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
— Oscar Wilde
***Realizing she's the freak of the bunch, coco tries to rationalize...***
See, in YW, I was taught that you were supposed to date a lot of people. So you didn't get... no, I don't like where this is going.
* *
Okay, when I was in YW, we were really encouraged to date a lot, just for fun. I actually only went on dates with about 5 or 6 people the year I was 16. Then we moved to Utah and that's when things picked up. (Must be a Utah thing.) Then at BYU it picked up, too. Then the year at the U of U before my mission it picked up almost to insane proportions. But, as the evidence shows, dating a "lot" does not insure success in a marriage. And dating very little or what you might call not at all, does not determine a successful marriage, either.
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Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. -John Wayne
I didn't date until I was 26, and then I dated the girl I married 10 months later. We're celebrating our 10 yr anniversary this year.
In the 6+ years we've had our kidlings, we've arranged a baby sitter maybe four times. That suits us just fine. We're pretty much like Ray describes. The only thing we've wanted to do without the kids is see the Harry Potter movies, and that's just because they're a little young for such dark themes.
However, I do monthly daddy-daughter dates like clockwork.
Nita: My wife was on fewer dates than that when I found her. When I first attempted to call on her, I was the ward clerk and she was convinced that she'd bounced a tithing check or something and couldn't imagine that I'd have any interest in her despite ample razzing from her roommates. Much of our dating consisted of me trying to convince her that she was the one I loved and that she was great and beautiful... and well, I still try to convince her of that, cuz she has a tendency to forget that. So Nita, you're a super person and any single guy who doesn't get that needs a pack of Ninjas to kick him in the throat repeatedly...
There! I said it! ;)
--Ray
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I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
Thanks guys for the words of support! I know I am my own bad enemy in that I am so afraid of getting hurt that I shy away from making an effort to be a friend to guys in my age range and to be as outgoing as I can be in other settings, ie w/other ages of people.
I like the idea of Ninja's, hmmm.
Ray- How funny your wife thought she'd bounced a tithing check! The first time my dad gave my mom a present (before they started dating I think), he gave her a stuffed monkey. He brought it to her dorm-- and the ot her girls in the dorm thought it ws for the other girl in that dorm hall that had the same name!
We talk a lot, too, Polly. I think that's one thing that really helps couples have a strong bond. Sometimes in the evening when the kids are down, MrCoco will be in the office and I'll be on the couch with a book and he'll come in to say goodnight (he gets up way earlier than I do) and we'll start talking. Three hours go by, it's 2am, and we realize we better get some sleep! It's cool.
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Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. -John Wayne
Polly it probably works for you and your sweetheart, for the same reason it works for me and my wife... because we want it to work, and we don't take it for granted. We count ourselves fortunate. Our marriage is part of God's grace. A miracle. Every day with my spouse and family is a gift.
--Ray
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I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
we all know where that landed.
and I know that how bad I mess up the etiquette, she won't tell all her friends what a loser I am, and we'll still get to go out again.
Now I'm going to be spending time thinking back to my pathetic days as a teen and young adult and come up with a count on both! (hey, at least it won't be on one hand -- that is the number of dates! 
is free.
(and yes I did catch yer drift, but am choosing to 
it)
Oh well 
