It seems that with summer comes many parades…at least around our area. I went on a tour of a candy factory a few weeks ago and picked up some different kinds of taffy that we used as part of our date. What parade is complete without taffy? We did some taffy tasting to start. Some of our favorite flavors were red licorice, buttered popcorn, and macadamia nut. We would pass on the eggnog flavored taffy next time.
As we munched on taffy we looked up some facts about parades. Did you know that floats originate from medieval times? We didn’t! To round out our date we watched slides of this year’s Rose parade. Talk about some incredible floats!
We love spending time in our PJs! One of our Christmas traditions is to get new PJs to open on Christmas Eve. This is a pic of our most recent new PJs.
For this date we did everything in our comfy pajamas. We updated our little girl’s scrapbook together. We also threw some pillows on the floor and watched a movie. Simple and relaxing that’s the way we like our dates.
Doesn’t this sound like a thrilling date?!? It may not seem like a fun date, but it can really help your relationship.
I’m not one to set goals only once a year. I like to set them pretty regularly, really anytime there is something I want to change in my life. I have a hard time with really long term goals too. I’m all about baby steps.
For this date Ty and I started out by evaluating each other as a spouse and parent. You have to be kind to your spouse and have a tough skin at the same time. Tyler and I go into this every time being very open and honest. We always start with the positives first. We like to build each other up. We talk about what the other person is doing well as a mother/father first. Then we talk about the things they could do differently or improve on. It’s funny how when we start with the positives the negatives dwindle quickly. We then do the same thing with a role as a wife/husband. It really gives us a chance to discuss concerns that we have with ourselves or our partner.
After we have been “evaluated” we talk about goals that we want to achieve. We set goals individually, as a couple, and for our family. It is really good to talk about individual goals, because you can help your spouse and be held accountable to someone for your goals also.
I know this wasn’t the funnest idea we’ve ever shared, but we usually end up laughing and feeling better about our relationship 🙂
Our daughter will be ready to move from her crib to a big girl bed in a few months. It is an exciting time! We are trying to get ready with some “new” furniture for her room. First we headed on over to IKEA for an end table. They have these great little tables for only $10. We have a dresser from when my husband was a little boy. We decided to update it. So when we were at IKEA we look for new handles also. We’re still debating about whether or not we want to paint or refinish the dresser. We did find a couple of websites that would help if we do decide to paint. Here they are:
http://icreatewithlove.blogspot.com/2012/01/my-new-green-storage-solution.html
http://www.classyclutter.net/search/label/Furniture
We don’t know about you, but after the holidays we had a lot of candy left over. This date was intended to get rid of some of that candy. Tyler made a memory game with different pictures of candy. If you got a match you got to eat the candy in the picture. We also played a bingo type game with dice and M&Ms. It was fun to play games and eat candy.
We don’t know about you, but one of our favorite parts of the holidays is all the lights and decorations. This date was simple, but a blast. We drove around to some of our favorite spots with lights. Near us there is a street that puts up the story of the nativity. There is also a circle that is named Christmas Street. Every house on the street decorates. It is a great time to chat and reminiscence. 
This date had more of a graham cracker theme. It was fun. We started off by doing this graham cracker activity that Tyler found online http://www.wheatmania.com/allaboutwheat/awesomeactivities/grahamcrackeractivity.htm Then we started to create our gingerbread/graham cracker houses. We don’t know if our crackers were too weak or our frosting was too soft, but both of our houses ended up caving in before we got pictures. The picture below was our inspiration 🙂 
We had a very Grinchy date the other night. We made some Grinchy treats and watched the live action version of the Grinch. We made a green Grinch drink, which was simply green fruit juice and a scoop of ice cream. We also made green cookies. I wanted to do the mint variation listed below the recipe, but I couldn’t find mint chips at the grocery store. We just added a little green food coloring to the batter. It was really fun. You could also watch the animated Grinch.
Triple chip cookies
Ingredients:
3 cups flour      1 teaspoon soda     1 teaspoon salt      1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed       2/3 cup shortening
2/3 cup butter, softened (=11 tablespoons)
2 eggs    2 teaspoons vanilla      ½ bag white chocolate chips
½ bag semi-sweet chocolate chips                   ½ bag milk chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix flour, soda and salt. Cream together sugars, butter, shortening, eggs and vanilla. Stir in dry ingredients until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips. For a softer cookie stir (stir by hand) ½ cup flour. Form into balls about 1 ½ inches in diameter. Bake 8-10 minutes. (Beth cooks them for 8 ½ minutes.) Cool 2 minutes before removing from the cookie sheet to the cooling rack. You can freeze the dough. If baking frozen dough bake for 10-12 minutes.   Beth bakes hers on parchment paper.
Variations:Â Substitute for the white chocolate chips, peanut butter, butterscotch, mint or any other flavor of chocolate chips you would like.
Add ½ cup of peanut butter when creaming sugars and liquids. The dough will be a little denser and will not spread as much when baking.
Add ½ cup cocoa when add the ½ cup of flour and end and stir in by hand. The dough will be a little denser and will hold its shape more.
We love Christmas and are getting very excited for it already! Tyler has been asking for a week if we can put up our tree. We decided to start the holiday season a little early. With this date we started building our Christmas village. We decided to make a Christmas village out of legos this year. The start to our village can be seen below. Tyler built Santa’s workshop and I built a candy cane factory. 
datingwithcoinage 