The Beauty and the Beast

Tonight is a glorious night! Tonight is "Date Night" for us and 4 additional couples. Here's how it works and I highly recommend it to those of you out there with kids who can never seem to get a date with your spouse:

Once a month we do this. It's always the same time of the month so you can plan on it! We have a schedule already typed up for the remainder of the year so it's serious and not altered unless several of the couples agree to the change! Tonight we will have 3 couples who get the benefit at 6:30 of dropping their children at the house. They are then free for 3 hours until 9:30 when they must (that's mandatory and not optional - HA) return to pick up their children. They can go out to dinner, catch a movie, go shopping, whatever. There are then 2 couples who stay at the house and are in charge of watching the kids. Thus the "beast" reference !! :) If you are thinking that sounds too much, know that we have about 11-12 kids in this "beastly" group ranging from 6 month olds to 5 year olds - gasp!! But we can do anything for 3 hours - especially knowing that 911 is a call away!!!

Tonight - it's a beauty because we are part of the date group. We hope to see a movie while grabbing a quick fast food bite on the way. Usually if there's not a good movie out, my wife and I love a leisure meal at Macaroni Grill, On The Border or some other sit down restaurant. We don't do that with our kids much so it's nice knowing there's not any McDonaldland playground equipment within eyesight.

So here's my plug to all you parents out there. Get connected with some other couples and figure out your rotation. It took us several versions of the spreadsheet to get it right but we finally did so that no one couple has to "babysit" more than 2 months in a row. That means there are lots of built-in dates for us over the next several months. And that's beautiful, Belle!!

God bless you all,

SJ