Date Night

We had a date night alone tonight! We don't always get those easily when our babies are under 1 yr old...nursing, along with not being able to be gone long, and just the separation issue itself. So, when our babies have been little we would take them and leave the bigger girls with a baby sitter. But Ruby is getting older and tonight we got to go out just the two of us. Some people have commented about how is our relationship ok if we don't go out alone, or even leave our kids overnight somewhere to be alone. Well, I think there are a few things that make it work for us. One being, we don't know anything else...and neither do our kids. We've actually never been the couple that had tons of dates from the beginning. It just never happened for us for several reasons. Early on in our marriage there were times that we were really broke. And when I say broke I really mean broke. Like we didn't have a car for different seasons in our life. And along with that there were many times that we didn't have the money to even buy laundry detergent (that's right...we sometimes just had to use whatever soap we had left in our house when we couldn't even buy laundry detergent) so dates were not a top priority. But because our life was like this, we just did other things to make time. And with tons of grace God has given us a really strong marriage. I also think it has something to do with the fact that Brandon and I have known each other since middle school and we have been best friends for years. 

Now don't get me wrong, it would be great if we had date nights weekly or even monthly and all of that great stuff, but we just spend our time together once our kids are in bed. In other countries families actually all sleep in the same room. They don't even have the luxury of having separate rooms, nonetheless "date nights". So, we feel pretty blessed. Also, we do love our girls so much and they have been pretty well mannered kids when we take them out (for the most part), so we try to do things with them as a family and that's just the way it is right now. I imagine soon enough these years will be gone and they will have interests of there own, so we want to be present in the now. And right now we have little kids. They won't always be little. So, we try to balance the thoughts of when they are older we will probably get to go out a ton. So dates here and there just have to be the way it is. Not to mention it does make date nights a little more difficult when you don't live close to family. So, we are thankful for who God has brought into our lives to help babysit. But we are also thankful that God has given us grace to do family like we do.