I’ve said this before, but the best part of doing these date night box reviews is that they FORCE KP and I to spend concentrated, focused time together.
That probably sounds pathetic, right? Here I blog all about marriage all the time and I don’t even have these awesome regular connection times with my own spouse.
Y’all. Life is busy. I’m sure we’re not the only couple that struggles with finding time to spend quality time together. We’re a typical modern couple. Evenings are usually spent in front of the tv, working our way through whatever series we’re bingeing (we’re doing a re-watch of Breaking Bad right now), he with his phone in hand, me with my laptop, “multitasking”. He’s at his end of the couch. I’m at mine. During the week, we have probably an average of oh 10-15 min/day of actual talking/listening to each other. That’s it.
I know we should work on this. But. Life is tiring. At the end of the day, I just want to turn off kid noise and sit with my computer and get some work done that makes me feel like my own person again. KP wants to chill out from his long day at work.
So that’s why these night night boxes are so important to us.
We DON’T have a once-a-week or once-a-month scheduled date on the calendar. Usually we just look at each day and if there seems to be a good evening I ask “hey, I have a date night box to review – wanna do it tonight?” And that’s it. Nothing fancy. Other couples probably do things differently. But this is what works for us.
I am not going to lie. Sometimes, the initial thought of doing a date night feels like an obligation more than anything else. We get the kids in bed. I take some pictures of the box contents and get the table ready. We make some drinks and sit down.
I’d love to say that we always jump right into the first activity with unbridled enthusiasm. But tbh, half the time we’re still decompressing from the day and we start the date going through the motions. What do the directions say? Ok, cool. Let’s start. Oh wait, let me take a picture. Here will you take a picture of me doing this?
And that’s how things almost always start.
I emphasize START.
Because, you know what’s funny? No matter how lackluster we start off the date, by the time we finish, we’re always talking and laughing and connecting (well, except this one time, but hey, sometimes fights lead to discussion that need to be had so all’s well in the end) in much needed ways.
Some people call this idea of forcing yourself to do dates with your spouse being “intentional”. I prefer to call it “just doing it”. Either way, no matter what you call it – even when you’re not feeling date night at first, it’ll most likely still be worth it.
So for this month’s Crated With Love box review – I’m also going to focus on why it’s important to have date nights even when you are too busy or don’t feel like it.
Disclaimer: this post is sponsored by Crated With Love, but they don’t tell me what to write or edit my words – this is all me! My own thoughts, my own opinion, my own experience.
Crated With Love‘s theme this month was “You and Me in Yosemite”, so for fun, I decided that KP and I should do out date out on the back porch. We got out our camping lanterns and I practiced using some of the manual aperture features on my camera. I’d considered setting up the tent in the backyard to make things even cooler, but it didn’t happen. Either way, the patio table worked great too.
Box contents:
– Instruction Book
– Ghost Stories booklet
– Smores game cards
– National Parks cards
– multi-colored building sticks
– 2 sided map
– start stickers
– collapsible cup
– mini carabiner flashlight
We started off the date night with Activity 1:Ghost Stories, Mad Libs style. While these were a bit silly, hey, they were a good ice breaker into the date. And like I mentioned above, sometimes the beginning of the date still feels like we’re forcing it.
But by Activity 2: S’More Memories, we were getting into it more. I’ve definitely noticed a pattern in all these date night boxes we done – KP and I do best with activities that require us to be creative and/or build things (which is just another way of being creative afterall), or in this case, build short stories with 3 given words. It’s totally like we’re writers and creative people or something. 😉
Activity 3: Shelter Me was my favorite and the one we spent the most time on. We not only got to quiz each other on random outdoor national parks trivia, we also got to steal sticks from each other and build structures. By this point in the date, we were having a good time, feeling connected and flirty, and having fun together. The earlier “forced” feelings were gone.
The last activity, Activity 4: Our Love’s Map was a nice cap to the evening. It not only got us reminiscing about places significant to our past, but also planning hoping dreams for the future.
At this point in the date, honestly, I think we’d both forgotten totally that this date was once an obligation – overall it turned into a great evening together. We may have finished all the activities in the box (well, sort of, see below – there’s more!), but we stayed outside a bit longer hanging out and extending our date on our own.
The next morning, we added our “Bear” badge to our other badges earned. Look at our growing collection! 🙂
Before I tell you about the “wait, there’s more” bonus content below, here’s the quick details about Crated With Love:
- There’s 2 different kind of subscriptions: Digital Subscription (review here) $1.99/mo, and Story Mode Subscription (reviewed above); $17.99 – $26.99/mo depending on the options you choose
- With the Story Mode Subscription, you choose to add online Bonus Content. The Bonus Content is a great option if you’d like to extend your date each month. It comes with weekly activities to go along with your date box, as well as curated Spotify playlists and themed recipes. I review the Bonus Content in more depth in my next post, see here.
- Free shipping, ships to U.S. only
- If you click through THIS LINK to order, you’ll get $5 off your subscription!
Thanks so much Crated With Love for letting us review your Sept. 2018 You, Me & Yosemite date night box!
BUT WAIT – Scroll back up and check out the image of the box contents. Here’s a puzzle: can you spot the two included items (other than the lanterns) that were NOT used in my above review??
Click on over to my next post about CWL’s bonus content to see if you’re right…and find out why they weren’t used in the date (but are used in the bonus content).
