Date #1

My sister was telling me about a date-a-month thing that she read about and put together for her and her (newlywed) hubby.  They have an envelope for each month and there is an activity and sometimes a meal-card in the envelope.  They do a 'date-a-month' together.  I loved the idea and thought it was such a great way to keep dating exciting.

We are lame and don't date much... at all!  Life can be exhausting and there is so much going on it has not been a priority.  I wanted to change that, so I built on my sister's idea and put together some dating envelopes of my own.    I have a totally of about 18 envelopes: there is a lot of variety in there.  There are at-home dates, go out dates, cheap dates, more expensive dates, ect.  I figure we'll do 1-2 per month.  My sister's dating envelopes were cute: she had a little handwritten note about the activity, but I went a step further and spent an entire day making little graphic-invitations and printouts.  Some envelopes have an 'object' to match the theme or other little handout-type things.  I used a lot of ideas from a few dating blogs and adapted them to something we would enjoy.  It was a lot of fun to prepare the dates and I love that I can surprise Kale with the ideas.

(I don't want to list the activities here because my husband might check the blog and the surprises would be spoiled!  If you want me to email you the things I have or the ideas at least, I'd be happy too - just leave me a comment and let me know.)

We pulled our first envelope last week and it was so much fun!  It was a "Family Tree" date.  The date invitation had a little tree and it said "I know about you, and you know about me, but what about our family tree?"  I also put a print-out of the family history center here in Ogden with hours/times listed.  We picked a day to go that week and made it happen!  We got there and had a volunteer help us get started.  It's kind of addictive and I felt like a detective.  The familysearch.org program was helpful and we were able to plug all our information in that we knew.  My side of the family is pretty well documented, but Kale's isn't so that took some detective work to get even just a few generations.  Here is a little portion of what we have so-far.  I love the fan-chart display the best.  The birthdates only show on those that have passed away (except me, I'm still here).  It was so fun to see the census reports we could find, and even some graphics from Ellis Island!  Plugging in the info and seeing it all together was so neat.  Family is so important and I loved learning about preserving that.  Kale even had fun too!

After spending time there, we headed out to eat.  Each envelope has a gift-card, and this one had one to Union Grill in Ogden.  This is another benefit to having the even lopes with actual gift-cards in them: Money/Budget can't be an excuse to not dating.  I haven't eaten there and it was really cute and quant.  The food was delicious and it was nice to spend the time together without distractions.  Thanks to my mom for babysitting for us.  We are exciting to date and look forward to our next envelope!