Our First At Home Date Night

Since becoming parents, date nights seem like a thing of the past. In the past nine months, we have been on one date night and out for breakfast together (alone) once. So, we decided that this year we will have a monthly date night at home once the baby goes to sleep for the night. It will be a way for us to connect as a couple and spend quality time together.

I am lucky to have a husband who will play along with such things. But I learned how seriously he takes our time together when we received a dinner invitation on the scheduled date night he told them we already had plans and would need to pick a different day. I am thankful I have a husband who values our relationship.

I volunteered to plan our first date night since it was my idea. I wanted to keep it simple for the first date so I went with a “game night” sort of theme. I also didn’t want to spend much money…this ended up being free since I had everything we needed at home already!

I found a free printable at The Dating Divas for The Not So Newlywed Game and went from there.

I’m the one who puts baby girl to bed every night—so when it was bed time, I left this invitation for hubby to find.

And because babies know when there is fun to be had without them, they fight sleep for all that they’re worth. Seriously. It took like 2 hours past her normal bed time for her to finally go to sleep. Every other day, she’s like clock work. Funny how that works!

And I admit, at that point I felt like throwing in the towel on the date night—but hubby was uber excited about it and it rubbed off on me.

My only rule was that cell phones had to be placed on a table where neither of us could reach them. I wanted us to be un-plugged and not distracted by technology.

So I made us a batch of my Best Ever Microwave Kettle Corn Recipe to munch on while we played our game. Hubby was begging me to make a second batch of this…but we stuck with just one!

There were 50 questions in the printable kit. I love the color scheme of this game design, but that’s beside the point.

I cut them all out, folded them up, and put them into a mason jar.

We chose 10 questions at a time (I think we went through 3-4 rounds), and wrote the answers on our answer sheets.

The questions were fun and great conversation starters. We reminisced about our wedding day, memories from when we were dating, and even learned some new things about each other.

I added an additional element to our game. I also created a BINGO card to make things fun. So while we were playing The Not So Newlywed Game, we had to watch out for the other one to say one of the words on the BINGO card or do one of the actions. And of course, try to coerce the other person into saying one of the words. It was kind of silly and totally random.

My husband doesn’t have the nickname Mr. Competitive for nothing. He was all about this. But I ended up winning anyways—muahahaha. He said it was because he didn’t understand the rules. Of course he would say that.

Even though it got off to a rocky start, our first date night was a success. We both said how much we enjoyed spending time together just talking and having fun.

I can’t wait to see what hubby plans for our February At Home Date Night!