Last year before Christmas there was a Groupon for a company that would send a box each month with a date night inside. With a one year old and another baby on the way, I thought that sounded like a fun way to have a date night without having to hire a sitter and go out, so I signed up and gave it to my husband as a Christmas gift. The fact that he thought it was something he should have given me, not the other way around, didn’t make me feel very encouraged about the experiences we were about to be sharing.
However, he agreed to go along with it. The first box arrived and I was really excited, it was a stress release theme. Part one included questions to ask about your partners stressors, then encouraged us, as a couple, to make plans to reduce each of the stressors. It lead to a really great talk (NO TV!) about what we were each thinking but didn’t express well, or at all, to the other person.
Part two was supposed to be the fun part! It was coloring! There were two 4x6ish cards with coloring patterns and colored pencils were included. My five year old self was very excited to finally join, if in a small way, this adult coloring trend. I colored to my hearts (literally) content. All the while my husband was sitting next to me sayin:
“I haven’t been this stressed out ever. Coloring is awful. Why are they making us do this?’
Well. I know what NOT to get him in the future. If nothing else, it was fun to spend time together doing something new, and I at least enjoyed the ‘date’ and got a good chuckle out of his reaction to it.
We have two more date boxes to do and I can only hope for a better reaction to the next one!
