Mini Vacation Date (6-24-11)

We took a visit down to Cedar City last week and rather than postpone our date, we figured we'd take advantage of Eli's willing grandparents for our first Eli-less date! We drove down to St. George with a sleeping Eli and then we passed him off to Jeff's parents as they were leaving the temple and we were going in.

I can't get enough of the St. George temple. It's so pretty.

After we went to the temple, we did a quick, discreet change of clothes in the car and we were off to AMAZE-ING (glow-in-the-dark) GOLF. Side story -- The day before I found out I was pregnant we were in St. George and I told Jeff I wanted to go mini golfing. He said he didn't want to go and I cried. After I took the pregnancy test the next day I realized why my mini golf emotions were so high.

Jeff and I never ended up going mini golfing that day. I took advantage of my date week to finally force him to go mini golfing with me since we have a mutual agreement that we have to participate in the planned date without crabbing. We both ended up having way too much fun and I dare say Jeff might be the one dragging me back there one day.

My, my. Look who won:

We were on our way home, talking about what a fun date we had as we passed Brigham Young's winter home. Jeff half heartedly said, "Wanna go in?" And I thought, "Why not? We have a free babysitter for the evening!" In no time Jeff was attempting to parallel park and we were waiting in line for the next tour.

I loved this part of the date because it kind of weirdly felt like we were at Disney Land again. It was fun to relax, learn something new and feel like we were on a little vacation.

Jeff's High: The spontaneous decision to visit the Brigham Young Home.
Jeff's Low: Losing mini golf.

Sarah's High: Winning mini golf. Obviously.
Sarah's Low: When Jeff told me he was going to get a summer wife in St. George after I told him I would never live in St. George in the summer. He's so charming sometimes.

Play Ball! (6-16-11)

Jeff is setting a pretty high standard for our dates. He has exceeded all my expectations and he's been so willing to play along with the cheesy romanticism of everything. I love it. I was almost in tears when I opened my email Thursday afternoon and found this:

Yeah. He made that. The little cutie! It had our address on it, too, but I didn't really want that posted on the internet. Then he picked up some dinner on his way home from work:

 And he told me to go put my Dodgers shirt on.

I have a feeling you'll be seeing a lot of pictures similar to these two.

Here is my high of the night: my favorite thing about playing catch is catching a "snow cone." For those of you who don't know what a snow cone is, it's pictured below. I suggested we try to catch a snow cone and then Jeff threw it to me and I made my big snow cone catch first try!

 After we tossed the ball around we chatted outside for a bit.

Then it got cold so we went inside to eat the Cracker Jacks. And that brings me to my low of the night. This was our Cracker Jack prize:

You're supposed to stick it on your pencil so it looks like ants are marching on it. Dumb, right?

We finished the night off watching "Rookie of the Year." Well. Jeff finished the night that way. I fell asleep about a half hour into it. Whoops!

Jeff high: "Rookie of the Year"
Jeff low: Sarah falling asleep during the date

It was another perfect date night from my handsome husband!

A Night Under the Clouds (6-10-11)

It was my turn to plan the date again! I wanted to have a romantic date night under the stars. I made a "date card" for Jeff (like from The Bachelor). I taped it to our front door the night before our date and I rang the doorbell. Then I ran up to our room to let him know his date card had just arrived. I think I'm going to start doing that for every date. It was fun.

I borrowed my parents' croquet set for the evening.

And I spiced it up by making a few rules of my own. I had my mom put together a list of quotes from all our favorite TV shows and then each time we went through a hoop we were read a quote and had to guess who said it. If we got it wrong, we lost the extra hit we would have earned from getting through the hoop.

I had forgotten Jeff basically lived a double life during college as a croquet champion and he blew me out of the water. It also didn't help that he's really good at remembering TV quotes. He had a major advantage.

Then Eli started crying and I got bored while Jeff was tending to our child:

Looking good.

We finished up our game of croquet and sat down to do a little star gazing. Then we noticed it was cloudy. And cold. And to top it off, we were interfering with a cute little baby bird learning how to fly. We decided nature was trying to tell us to go inside. We watched the bird from inside for a little bit and then we watched a few episodes of Arrested Development.

Jeff High - Beating me at croquet

Jeff Low - Shuffling through the quotes to find the right questions and answers.

Sarah High - Watching the baby bird flop out of the nest and learn how to fly.

Sarah Low - It was cloudy. So my starry date wasn't so starry.

Salty Date (6-3-11)

It was Jeff's turn to plan the date. He had been wanting to go to Antelope Island for a while, so he figured date night was the perfect night to make the journey.

We are finding it might be hard to do date nights without the baby. So we make do and let him come along while he's awake.

Who knew there were sandy beaches in the middle of Utah?!? I had to keep reminding myself we weren't in California.

Salty part one of the date was our visit out to The Great Salt Lake. Part two was salty snacks. Jeff made yummy homemade tortillas so we could have enchiladas with our chips.

Then we finished the night off watching the movie "Salt" (not recommended, but you gotta do what you gotta do to fit a theme). It was such a clever date my sweet husband planned for us!

One of my favorite things to do is to ask people their "high lows." It's the best part of something and the worst part of something. I have decided to start documenting the high lows from our dates. Here are the salty date high lows:

Sarah's High: When Jeff told me the "Salty Date" theme.

Sarah's Low: This low needs some explanation. We have had tons of spiders in our house the last couple of days. Everywhere. Spiders. Yuck. I hate spiders. The day before our date I spent the last two hours before Jeff got home from work chasing down a huge spider with a bottle of hairspray, hyperventilating and screaming.

Also, a few nights earlier, Jeff had made a smoothie and let's just say the...blender...malfunctioned and we've been finding strawberry smoothie splattered in random places of our kitchen ever since.

So Jeff was in the kitchen cooking dinner. I found a splatter of smoothie on a ribbon on one of our decorations. I lifted up the ribbon and pointed it out to Jeff.

Jeff stared in awe. It was weird from my point-of-view. But from his view, he could see my finger was millimeters away from a huge, nasty spider under the ribbon. That was definitely my low.

Jeff's High: He had fun homemaking the tortillas for dinner. Nevermind that he did that all by himself...

Another one of Jeff's highs happened while we were driving around Antelope Island. All of a sudden a buffalo popped out from the side of the road and crossed the street right in front of us. Then another one and another one. We were happy to see a little wildlife on our Antelope Island tour.

Jeff's Low: There were a zillion gnats around The Great Salt Lake. When we went down by the water Jeff said they were all over Eli and his hair.

How it Started

On May 27, 2011 I decided I wanted to start dating my husband. The night before, we had talked about how fun Friday nights used to be. Shortly after we were married, I was scheduled to work every Friday night. Our busy schedules caused us to lose the Friday night excitement and along with that, we lost our weekly date night.

After I had Eli, I quit work and we suddenly had Friday nights open again, but we had forgotten what to do with an open Friday night! It took me a whole year to remember we can still date and have fun on Fridays even though we're married. I sent this little poem to Jeff while he was at work on Friday:

I planned the first date night. We ended up going to McDonald's to grab dinner (romantic, right?) and then we took it to a park to have a little picnic. After we ate, we walked around the park and there were a bunch of girls playing softball. We watched them play for a little while and then went home to put Eli to bed.

After we put Eli to bed, we began making an apple pie together.

Jeff made the crust and I made the filling. I had found some weird questions on the internet to ask Jeff while we were baking and it was fun to hear his responses. While the pie was cooking we played Phase 10 and I was the proud winner.

The pie was absolutely DELICIOUS!

Our first date night was a success and I let Jeff know I was interested in a second date with him. I was acting a little goofy that night, so he hesitated to agree to go out with me again, but something's telling me he was just playing hard to get.