In My Girl's World

Hi there and WELCOME to the second edition of our monthly link up, Not Just a Mom! If you are new here, please think about joining us for this link up. Every second Monday of the month we share a little bit about us!!! Being a Mommy is my most important job, but it's not my only job! As a mother, sometimes you lose your identity a little bit, but we are here to find it.

To link up: Add our graphic to your post (please), and to link up, scroll to the bottom of this post OR click HERE which will take you directly to the inlinks website. Our monthly topics are located at the bottom of this post. Please stay on topic, share our graphic and keep it fair ;) 

Today we are discussing how I do DATE nights. 
Very appropriate given that Valentine's Day is THIS Friday!

Dating your partner is so important... You can't lose that love that caused you to grow your family in the first place. For us, date nights have been few and far inbetween... So we definitely need to be better about making them a priority. While we are bad at doing date nights, we do simple small things together regularly... Sometimes it's as small as waiting for Ella to go to bed, and one of us running to get 2 Mcflurries to enjoy on the couch while watching a movie. (Honestly, that just sounds like the best right now.) Other times, we take Ella with us to date night, but let her watch youtube on our phone so we can enjoy a meal together in peace. People shame parents when they see this, but isn't that a better alternative than leaving her at home all together? To be honest I'm really not sure, but that's a whole other issue that I don't have time for right now... haha.

When we do have a sitter we love keeping it simple... Dinner & drinks out, and going for a walk together. But when we don't (more often) date night in is where it's at. Ella goes to bed between 7 and 7:30 so it gives us a lot of us time at the end of the day. This past weekend, Michael was away snowboarding and I really missed him. Distance really does make the heart grow fonder, doesn't it? I wanted to surprise him with a little 'date night in' on the night he got back. He was surprised and it was great to just connect with him and talk about our weekend while munching on some yummy treats.

Here are some pics from our date night in!

Lit some candles and threw together a small snack board to enjoy while we watched a movie on the couch... Some chocolate, berries, veggies, cheese and crackers. Sometimes you have to work with what you have and that's ok. I love snack boards, and eating a bunch of random little things. A lot of times we might have nuts, hummus/pita, salsa/chips, popcorn etc.

It doesn't always have to be big and fancy, and it doesn't ALWAYS have to require going out. We do think we are going to start a monthly date night where we do leave the house, because it's important to us to get out alone too. But for us, date night in works and is more cost effective which is always nice.

I can't wait to see how you ladies do date night! I am literally so excited to read your posts!!!
Thanks for reading and I hope to see some of you guys linking up. I am going to keep the party open all week! :)