a shine machine: Date Nights-Guest Blogger Annie!!

Hi there! I'm Annie from Letters to Mo- a blog that started as a modern day baby book for my one year old son Cash (nope, he's not actually named Mo!) and now covers everything from marriage and love to faith and pop culture with some adventure thrown in, too. I'm thrilled to be guest posting for Janel today, as hers is one of the first blogs I started reading and I've been a faithful reader ever since! Aside from the blog, you can also find me on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest!

Best parenting advice I ever got was from my mother (who hates when I call her mother). She was smart enough to back off when in my total hormonal craziness swore Cash was sick or something was wrong with him because he wouldn't wake up to eat when he was two days old like the doctors and lactation consultants swore he would. She was smart enough to not tell me I was nuts when I told her I wanted to try to cloth diaper (I got over that whole thing real quick!) and she was awesome enough to not say anything when I told her I wanted to name my son Cash and no, we weren't finding out the sex. The one piece of advice she ever gave me was, "take care of your marriage. Someday all your little chickadees will leave the nest and what you have left will be your relationship with your husband". And that's been pretty good advice.

So I try to have a marriage centered family in this day and age of kids ruling everything. So date nights aren't a rarity in our house. We do everything possible aside from leaving Cash with the homeless guy downtown to make sure we get date nights in. Thankfully we have an abundance of awesome friends who are ready and willing to jump in for babysitting duty (and remind them why they don't have children).

Date nights always simple (usually dinner out or a movie) and usually only around 2-3 hours long, but they do wonders to rejuvenate our marriage. They make us happier individually and happier together. They help us remember to hold hands, laugh with each other, snuggle on the couch together and just keep us in tuned with each other. They help us to remember that we aren't just Mama and Daddy, we are man and wife. They help to connect us when we are so busy with jobs, Cash, the house, the pets and everything in between.

My favorite date nights (we call them this even though they are always in the middle of the day) are things where we get to be active. As much as I love snuggling up to the hubs while watching a movie, I love getting out and doing stuff even more. So on our last day night we hit a bowling alley where I promptly whopped him with my mad bowling skills.