A Dating First

Chris and I have known each other for over 13 years now--dated for a year and a half, corresponded via letters for two years, married for nearly nine years now. In all that time, neither of us really feel like we "dated" in the strictest sense of the term. Our Define the Relationship conversation consisted of me saying I wanted a boyfriend and him saying ok. Our dating relationship spanned over two states, and if we were lucky we saw each other once a month during that time. Once we were married, we were either together all the time anyway and didn't feel a need for a formal going out date, or we had kids and continued to opt for more staying in dates.

Well, that's all about to change!

We have met a family in our new ward that wants to swap babysitting with us. It's something that we've tried to work out for years with various different people and it never seemed to come to fruition. It always fizzled out after only a month or so. Then, we had too many kids. It's hard to swap our four kids with another family that only has one or two. But, HOORAY!, the Dickersons have four kids, too! (The babies are absent from the picture.)

And now, every other Friday, Chris and I get to go on a date. It's amazing.

One thing we have learned in the course of our relationship is that we don't have a ton of things that we both really love doing--I have my things, he has his, and they mostly don't overlap. So, we've decided to try new things. This week's adventure: bowling.

Apparently it's a little tricky to take pictures in a bowling alley. Or something.

Fun, but a bit more expensive than we want to spend all the time. We then decided on a free activity and hiked the trail through the National Petroglyph Monument. The petroglyphs were pretty cool to see, and the conversation was good. Yay for babysitters!

P.S. I may have used too many exclamation points in this post. My apologies to the grammarites out there. I might be just a little excited about actually dating my husband.