Let's Tie the Knot (7-6-12)

When I saw we had a wedding present that's been sitting in its wrapping for the past four years, I knew the time had finally come to put it to use.

 All I can say is, "Why the heck did we not crack that baby open sooner?!?"

First we spun the spinner and wrote down all of our spins so that we wouldn't have to deal with trying to spin mid game. It worked like a charm.

Thank you self timer for helping us capture our date nights. What self timer didn't capture was Jeff's Twister strategy. He made sure I didn't have a lot of options and he got me in a garbled mess every game. I never knew he was such a skilled Twisterian. The things you learn from date night.

I forgot to mention that we had made some pretzel dough that was rising during our game of Twister. After we were twisted out, we hit the kitchen to continue our knotty date... (I couldn't help it.)

I need to take a moment to thank Mel for yet another delicious recipe. That girl is an inspiration.

You have to dip the molded pretzels into a baking soda/water mixture. Our mixture didn't stay mixed very well, so Jeff got the brilliant idea to put the lid on the tupperware we were using to give it a good shake. Surely that would get everything nice and mixed, right?

Nope. Somehow his shaking managed to further assist the baking soda in separating from the water. Sometimes dating your spouse leads to unintended science experiments.

Here are our bronzed beauties. They. Were. Scrumptious. I ate somewhere between 2-6 for breakfast this morning.

Jeff High - Knocking me over in Twister.
Jeff Low - He put too much salt on his pretzels.

Sarah High - This conversation:
Sarah, "Jeff, thanks for being such a good sport in putting up with these dates."
Jeff, "What do you mean, 'putting up with the dates?' I love our date nights. I'm not putting up with anything."  He's cute.
Sarah Low - I was sick. Boo.

Jump Into Love (6-30-12)

Whenever I get dater's block, I tend to find myself looking to my childhood to get inspired. I love having an excuse to be a kid again, and pulling ideas from childhood games is a sure way to get a playful, super fun date.

I was keeping my great inspiration source from Jeff because I didn't want him stealing all my date ideas, but it seems as though he's tapped into my resource because we took our date to the trampoline this week!

This is where I will insert the cheesy Bachelor-esque line, "Jump Into Love!" And this is where I will spare you the endless analogies of how jumping on a trampoline is symbolic of our relationship.

After going on a "bee hunt" to kill all the wasp nests quickly overtaking our home, we had a jumping photo shoot. Jeff was super great at stealing my bounce right before every picture. And my camera was super great at making our faces blurry. Even with the stolen bounces and blurry faces, this was so so so much fun.

Then we played "add-on." If you're unfamiliar, one person does a trick and then the next person has to do the trick the other person did and then do their own trick. You keep doing this until you can't remember the run of tricks anymore. Or in our case, when you get too tired and sweaty.

By this time the sun had set and a cool breeze blew in. It was the perfect set-up for a "tramp talk." In junior high, my best friend and I were constantly on the trampoline having "tramp talks." The trampoline was the best place to talk because it was out of earshot of our parents, so they didn't know which boys we were talking about out on the tramp.

So last night I laid on the tramp chatting with my husband under the stars...still about boys...but about our sweet little boys. The best part about a tramp talk with your husband is that the trampoline has a way of sliding both of you to the center, so you can't help but cuddle. Bliss.

There you have it, folks. Jumping on a trampoline is kind of like love. It has its ups and downs, but in the end you always have each other. Oh crud. There's that cheesy love analogy.

Jeff High - Taking pictures - specifically "levitation pose."

Jeff Low - Bees flying around our house.

Sarah High - One of my tricks was "pencil" which was just me falling on my back while saying pencil. Jeff made us say, "PENCIL!" every time we did the trick. It made me giggle every time.
Sarah Low - That I proved to be very uncoordinated while playing add-on. If Jeff ever had any doubts, he can now be confident I was not a cheerleader in high school. Or ever.

 

Re-disc-overing Our Love (6-22-12)

I am so excited to be back in the dating game! I wanted the first date after our break to be fun and summery and something we haven't done for a date night yet. What says summer more than having a pleasant dinner picnic in your backyard?

It was the perfect picnic menu. Light, refreshing and delicious. We have some robins who made a nest in our backyard, and they kept us company with their new baby chicks as we enjoyed our meal.

Don't let my cropping of Eli in the above pictures fool you. Our children did accompany us on this date. But we tried to ignore them as best we could.

By "ignoring" our children I really mean taking our date to a park with a huge field next to it so that Eli could slide to his heart's content and we could play a little frisbee golf. Yes I said frisbee golf. It's exactly what you're imagining. You hit a target with a frisbee. Lowest score wins.

Frisbee golf is one of Jeff's favorite activities. He and his friends have created a course looping around and through SUU's campus.

Eli made himself hard to ignore by being super adorable as he followed us around being our caddy.

See. Caddy cuteness.

It was fun to come up with what our "holes" should be. This one was one of my favorites. We had to hit that bench which ended up being tricky because you had to throw a perfectly straight throw to avoid hitting the trees. Needless to say, I hit a tree. I also kind of love this picture.

Here's another favorite hole. We had to throw it through the picnic table to hit the tree right behind it.

Check out my stance. I actually did a lot better than I expected myself to. My brother Abe had taught me a few frisbee moves before I went to college. My training definitely paid off.

Did I mention is was 100 degrees outside? It was pretty darn hot. We enjoyed cooling off with my favorite summer treat -- snow cones!

It was fun to spend an evening outside doing summery things and refreshing to re-disc-over our love post baby.

Sarah High - The park ended up being the greatest frisbee golf course and it was extra great because we had the whole park to ourselves.
Sarah Low - I kept spilling my snow cone on myself.

Jeff High - Eli being the caddy.
Jeff Low - How hot it was.

Date Card!

Look what just magically arrived on our doorstep:

Straight from Chris Harrison.

Fine. I wrote it without the help of Chris or any TV producers. Even though we won't have a camera crew videoing our date tomorrow, I promise to provide plenty of photographic footage.

Excelladaters has finally returned after our three-month-we-had-an-adorable-baby-so-give-us-a-break hiatus.

Stay tuned.

Baby Date (3-23-12)

Okay, okay. I know many a website that claims you shouldn't talk about your children while on a date with your spouse. It's a time to escape the everyday yada, yada. So for everyone who thinks even talk of the children should be forbidden from date night, you'll probably be appalled by my date this week.

Because when Jeff got home from work on Friday I said, "Our date night is going to be Operation: Get Ready for Baby!" To which Jeff said, "Oh great. So basically you have a list of things you want me to do and you're calling that our date?"

He knows me too well. Although, I did remove installing the car seat and assembling the stroller from the night's activities to try to keep it more date-ish and less to-do-ish. My idea evolved to going to Wal-Mart to pick up snacks for the hospital and then come home to look through family names and try to finalize a name for baby. Fun, right? I thought you'd agree.

This is our hospital survival kit. The Goldfish and Fruit Snacks are Eli's special treats for the week of new baby, the bottles are obviously for #2 (Jeff refuses to use any other kind of bottle), and we plan to survive off Gatorade and candy.

When I was pregnant with Eli I bought a Gatorade as a part of my hospital bag. I don't buy Gatorade often, so it's a real treat when I finally get my hands on some. I resisted the many "cravings" I had for it leading up to Eli's birth, and then after I had Eli it was such a treat to feel like I finally deserved my Gatorade.

I'm hoping that bottle of Gatorade gets me through all the pushing this time around, too. If not the Gatorade, then the Sour Watermelons should help.

Then we looked through Jeff's family tree to help us decide on a name. We think we have one. But we've been very wishy-washy so things could change.

Here I am at almost 37 weeks pregnant.

I feel much more prepared for the baby now that we have a tentative name and our hospital bags nearly ready to go. Now I just need to figure out a way to get Jeff to get the car seat installed...

Bountiful Excursion (3-10-12)

We have a few recurring themes going on here. But hey, we do what we love when we go on dates together and boy do we love Chuck-A-Rama!

We went to the temple and then my parents took us to Jeff's favorite restaurant for his belated birthday dinner. The whole way down to Bountiful Jeff was telling me random bits of information he's learned about Chuck-A-Rama in the last few months. He knows the weekly menu, how to pay lunch price and get the dinner menu, and all sorts of insider information. It was adorable.

And I wonder why my face looks rounder and rounder with every picture that's taken of me...

After Chuck-A-Rama we went to our other favorite place -- Costco! Then we went home and I fell asleep at roughly 9:00. If there's two things a pregnant lady needs, it's food and sleep!

Jeff High - Going to the temple.
Jeff Low - Chuck-A-Rama and Costco were super crowded and crazy.

Sarah High - Listening to Jeff declare his love for Chuck-A-Rama on the way to Bountiful.
Sarah Low - Being too tired to function after 8:30.

Doughnut Retry (3-2-12)

I guess by this point I no longer need to remind you that we love doughnuts and we love cooking? Okay, good. Although, I do think our love for doughnuts is getting blown a little out of proportion on this here blog. But we had to master the ultimate Krispy Kreme imitator, so another doughnut date evolved.

We knew just what tools to use to make our doughnuts.

And this time we fried them instead of baked them. It's still healthier if it's homemade instead of store bought, right?

It was instantly decided that fried doughnuts taste much more Krispy Kremey.

And if I was embarrassed with the number of doughnut holes I ate last go-round, I'm not even going to try to remember how many I scarfed down on this date.

So if you haven't yet, make yourself a batch of doughnuts with your sweetie. We promise it won't disappoint.