Hey friends. I’m here today to talk to you about a very important topic. If you have a lot of kids who spend a lot of time keeping you a lot of busy, there was probably someone to blame for that, and that person is your spouse. In my case, when I got all baby hungry and crazy and said “Let’s have a million children right away”, I was really counting on my level-headed, responsible, intelligent husband to be the wise one and keep that procreation idea on a sensible course. And let me tell you, I married the most wonderful, amazing, superior man who utterly failed on that front. So much for level-headedness. And every now and again I like to reward him for letting me do whatever the heck I wanted in creating my clone army by taking him on a little date night. We heard that marriage experts highly recommend it, and we like to do everything that comes highly recommended by marriage experts as long as it’s something we wanted to do anyway.

If you’re like us, after a few years and a few kids you might have to look up date in the dictionary to remember what it is. Planning a date might feel like writing a doctorate thesis. You might not know what to do with yourself if there’s not a good movie playing at the local theater. You also might have trouble finding a babysitter that hasn’t met your kids yet that is willing to come over. I can’t help you with that. But if planning is your problem, I am here to tell you that you don’t have to be boring anymore. You can reinvigorate your marriage and your romance, with the Cami & Jessie Foolproof Dating Activity Extravanganza Plan™ and feel confident that your lives will never be the same. Here’s a small sample of some awesome adventures you can have together, that I swear we have actually completed. Maybe. After a fashion. You’re welcome.

1. Get dressed up in your date night best. Go to your local bookstore (I realize these are facing extinction, which makes my heart sad. If you can’t find a bookstore, a library also work great.) Find an awesome kid’s book and sit in the middle of the aisle and read it to each other in foreign accents. Alternatively, you could get McDonald’s pancakes and have a picnic in the aisle at your local grocery store. If you get asked to leave, blast YMCA on your phone and dance your way out of the establishment to show there are no hard feelings.
2. Head to a local mall and play the alphabet kissing game, in which you locate words on signs for every letter of the alphabet and take pictures of yourselves kissing in front of all of them. Don’t be lame and bring a selfie stick, make friends and let strangers take pictures for you because everyone loves taking pictures of PDA. If it’s a teenager taking the picture, make your kisses extra long and awkward and watch them squirm. Make a montage of your kissing and post it all over social media. Print it out in a scrapbook for your posterity, they’re going to love it.
3. If you have no time to plan but get a last minute babysitter, don’t despair. Find a quiet parking lot, lean back your seats as far as they will go, and crank some mediation tunes from Pandora. Do some random relaxation exercises you find on that internet. (Not those kind of relaxation exercises, silly. Keep it clean. You are in a parking lot.) If you are lucky you might fall asleep and get a half hour nap. Best date night ever.
4. Go to your local furniture store and pick out all the furniture for your future dream house, but don’t buy it because the salesmen love this. Ride the elevator a lot and kiss in between floors. (Is there too much kissing in this dating plan? Trick question. There is never too much kissing. Alternative date night idea: Go to your local craft store and pick out wood and paint to make a homemade sign for your wall with that mantra on it. Once again, your kids will thank you.)
5. Feeling like a little culture? Look up some recipes from random countries on the internet. Print them out and drive to your local ethnic grocery store to buy ingredients. After you realize how expensive that is, go to Walmart and just buy random stuff that you are pretty sure will be a good substitution for the strange ingredients you don’t recognize. Go home and cook it all up and feel insanely accomplished and enjoy your bounty. If it tastes terrible, blame it on the weird tastes of the countries you got it from, not your cooking or creative substitutions. Then eat ice cream with lots of toppings because no one can mess up ice cream. Unless they add ketchup. Honestly, who does that? Don’t ruin ice cream like that.
6. Date night is all about getting time away from the kids to remember how much you liked each other before your progeny came along. So go to dinner, pull out your phones, and look at a million pictures of your children. Talk about all the cute things they did that day. Go to a department store and buy them clothes and birthday presents. Come home and sneak into their rooms and hold hands while you watch them sleep like little angels. Journal your feelings together. Then stick that journal under your mattress so you can pull it out and read it at 3 AM when one of them comes in your room and pukes on your head.
7. Go to a thrift store and pick outlandish outfits for each other. Go to a very public venue and have a photo shoot. Then go bowling or mini golfing in your stylish couture. Make a rule that strikes or hole-in-ones be accompanied by a touchdown-style victory dance.

Well, I hope that helps. Follow the C&J FDAEP™ to the letter and I guarantee that your partnership will never be the same. You too, can revel in the knowledge that even if it doesn’t help your sanity as a parent, it will generate excellent blackmail photos to stick in your children’s wedding videos should they marry someone you don’t approve of and you want to tank the ceremony. Happy dating!