Time with my honey or time to prep some healthy delicious meals? Why not both?
This week’s post is a recommendation for you and your significant other or best friend to spend some quality time together while also prepping for a healthy week or future. Find a sitter, relative, or friend that will take the kids to their house (hello, grandma!), get yourself and your love into the kitchen, and let date night commence. Allow some wine (or drink of choice) to flow, some tunes to float and some laughter to get loud. Date nights don’t have to be OUT. They are actually really, really great to have IN!
My husband and I decided to give this a try because we were both just feeling really burned out. We wanted some time together, but we both actually just yearned to be home, so I said, “Well… let’s just stay home then.” We dropped the kids with grandma, grabbed some groceries, and came home to our comfy clothes and fireplace. We turned on the tunes and we spent most of the evening cooking, talking and just hanging out. We used to love to cook together before our life became more of a tag-team, and it was so great to have that time back. We actually threw in some loads of laundry and picked up the house a little bit before we got started (you can get so much done, so fast with no kids!). Then, we proceeded to make meatballs, pancakes, and a lasagna to freeze. We also put 6 chicken breasts on the grill and then shredded the meat for lunches for that week. We cut a bunch of fruit and veggies and put them in some ready to go containers for us and the kids to grab as snacks later on that week and threw some extras in the freezers to make quick smoothies. More importantly, we talked about important stuff and random stuff. We laughed and cheers-ed our glasses to a few accomplishments from the month before (two completely potty trained kids!), we picked at some of the yummy food we were cooking, and we may or may not have danced around the kitchen to our wedding song (hence the wedding photo pictured above, swoon).
The date night at home saved us a little bit of cash and gave us that restful feeling we were searching for. Our kids came home happy from a fun night away, and the week was just that much easier knowing there were some healthy choices right at our fingertips.
We wanted to simplify, so we spent our date night being a little resourceful, but mostly being together. We spend so much time making our home a beautiful place to be, it felt good to just enjoy it for a change.
Home is the nicest word there is. Laura Ingalls Wilder