A Year of Dates: January

For Christmas this last year Ryan and I decided to for go the usual gift giving, partly to save money and partly because we are redoing our basement and I'd rather have that done than a whole bunch of little gifts. So I brought up the idea of planning dates for this year as our gift to each other instead. Dates or spending quality time together had not been a priority the past couple of years especially since our second child, Elijah, was born. We have definatly felt the effects of not having "US" time and now was the time to change that!

We each took six months of this year and are planning a date a month.

I was the first one to plan a date and that was for the month of January. In planning my dates I did try to be as creative as I could with things we don't normally do and try to do it cost affective! So January was Starbucks and Barnes and Noble. I thought we could get some warm drinks b/c of the cold weather and then just browse through some books.

We first went to Red Lobster for dinner. We happened to get a gift card for Red Lobster from my parents for Christmas, so dinner was on them! (Thanks mom and dad!)

After dinner we headed over to Barnes and Noble. I was looking for a book to replace one I had gotten for Christmas that I already had and then we just wanted to have a look around. As you can see in the next picture we didn't end of getting warm drinks. It was too stinkin hot in that store for that!

I did find my replacement book! I had read "Crazy Love" by Frances Chan and loved it so I thought I'd try another one of his books.

We also checked our the Bargain racks. I really wish we would've gotten the Sesame Street book. It was the history of Sesame Street and would have come in handy for Eli's birthday!

I wander what the plan will be for next month?!?!?!