This is a holiday weekend for many folks including myself and my husband since we have Monday off for President’s day. We didn’t plan anything special for this weekend and just did our usual weekend things of a Friday night Target run, Saturday library visit, and outdoor play in the snow. We were lucky to have my parents offer to take our girls for Sunday through Monday so that Ryan and I could get some things done around the house and have some adult time.
Having time with your spouse without having to worry about the kids is very important to us because it helps our relationship stay healthy. With two young kids, it can be stressful on a relationship because the kids are the priority all of the time which means relationships can suffer unless you make time for them. Ryan and I try to go on a “date” at least once a month so that we can focus on us and our relationship.
Usually when we have kid free time, we spend the majority of it cleaning the house, doing laundry, organizing closets, etc. but this weekend we went a different route with our time. After dropping the girls off at my parent’s house, we met some friends at a local brewery for lunch and then hit up a few of the other breweries we hadn’t been to before but always talked about trying.
When we were home that evening, Ryan was kind enough to agree to be my yoga student. If you’ve read my yoga page, I am in a yoga teacher training program and we need to teach a 45 minute routine in our next session so I needed to practice on a person that wasn’t myself. I’ve tried to have my older daughter be my student but after about 2 minutes she just says she is going to do handstands until it is rest time (i.e. svasana). It was fun to teach Ryan yoga since he hadn’t ever really practiced it before and it was even more fun because there were no distractions (well besides our dog who didn’t understand what we were doing).
As I’ve said in another post, Ryan runs a lot, and I do not. So it was interesting to see him humbled a bit when it comes to strength and flexibility of some yoga poses. It was also a good opportunity for me to learn how to give alignment cues to someone whose flexibility is limited. So although he can run 50 mile ultra races, I can do a headstand 🙂
We try to find things to do together besides just watching a movie or TV (although I will admit that we ended up watching 2 episodes of Shark Tank last night). One of the those things we do is play board games. We are always looking for good two person board games because they are a fun thing to do in the evenings after the girls go to bed. Some of our favorites are San Juan, Seven Wonders, Dominion, and Carcassone. Now I will admit that with a demanding job, a demanding toddler with inconsistent sleep, and my yoga studies for my program, my brain hasn’t been able to handle much more so we haven’t played games as often as we would usually like to.
If we are looking to go out, we will do things like go to non-kid friendly food establishments (e.g. sushi or places with longer waits). Another thing we will do if we are out of the town is sing karaoke, usually at a local VFW. We actually did that last month when we went out on a date.
We also try to do getaways at least once or maybe twice a year with just us. Our go-to vacation spots are Las Vegas (we like to gamble) and Napa/Sonoma area for wine tasting. Not all getaways need to be that extravagant though. We do more local getaways by spending a weekend at a casino or else we will drive up to northern MN for cross country skiing and snowshoeing.
Prioritizing our relationship from time to time, whether being an expensive getaway or just playing a board game between the two of us, helps to keep our relationship healthy. I realize not everyone is as lucky to have family nearby to help out but hopefully you can find ways to still have “dates” whether it is just after the kids go to bed or with a babysitter. Because with kids in the mix, relationships can fall to the bottom of the prioritization list. I encourage you to put it to the top of your list from time to time because that is important too!
What are fun things you do with your spouse or partner?
