Q3 Dates (David and Shantel)

I love going on dates with this wonderful guy. Honestly, I feel grateful for how many opportunities that we have to spend one-on-one time together. 

1. We do a 3 hour date swap with our next door neighbors, the Wards, once a month (we get a date, they get a date). 

2. We swap for "Cousin Weekend" where all the cousins go to one house once a month and the other two couples get a date weekend. This means that we host cousin weekend 4 times a year and we get 7 date weekends in a year. 

3. We have Hale Center Theater season tickets, so if we can't arrange the date night/date weekends around our play dates, we ask Amy or my mom to come watch the kids for our play. 

4. A handful of other events that give us time together. Sometimes this is as small as sneaking away for a game night across the street, or a movie at Thanksgiving point while Lydia babysits or sometimes it's a larger event like David's work Christmas party that we have to get a specific babysitter for. 

We have a lot of opportunities to be together and I recognize that it's a huge blessing in our lives, one that not everyone has readily available to them. I'm grateful because I think that going on dates, big and small, is so good for our relationship and the opportunity to do things together is an important part of our lives! Honestly, sometimes we go to the grocery store and pick up Panda and Arby's to eat after we put the kids to bed and while we watch a Hallmark movie. Sometimes we take 8 hours to hike to the top of a mountain together. I love all of the things because I genuinely just love to be with David. 

Here are some of the highlights from our dates during July, August, and September. 

Hale Center Theater Orem - Seussical & Arsenic and Old Lace

We are soaking in the last few performances in the historic Orem Theater space. We love it here so much, and are disappointed that the theater is moving to a new space. But, we understand that things change and we are grateful to be along for the ride. 

Seussical - We went to Seussical in July -  The music was fun and upbeat. The musical numbers were energetic and exciting. It is amazing how the Hale Orem can create such outstanding, high-impact performances in such a small space. 

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Arsenic and Old Lace - We went to this in September, as part of my birthday weekend celebration. Arsenic and Old Lace is one of my favorite plays, and I loved seeing it one last time at my favorite theater. Kevin and Amy came with us (we gave them tickets for their birthdays last year).

BONUS: Amy and Derek Perkins invited us to go to the Hale Center Theatre Sandy performance of The Nutty Professor. It was fun to go with them and their family (and generous of their parents to allow us to use their extra tickets as we tagged along). The performance was fun and funny and so well done (although even with all the high show-stopping production, you have to miss a little bit of the smallness of the other theater). This was the first performance that Lydia babysat for us through the whole thing and we were so grateful to her! 

Hiking Mt. Raymond

We knew we wanted to go on a hike for our date weekend in September and looked into several 5ish mile hikes. We ended up hiking the Mt. Raymond Summit, because I've not stopped talking about it since I hiked it with some friends last year. We LOVED it! 

-7.5 miles
-3,028 elevation gain

We saw a giant Bull Moose on the trail about 30 minutes into the hike and almost turned around to go home. I mean, we did turn around and run the other way as fast as we could. But then we saw him cross the path to join up with his family a little ways off and decided to be brave and keep going. I was sincerely terrified that we might be in physical danger, but the adrenaline from seeing the moose helped propel us up one of the steepest parts of the hike. 

These pictures with the peak behind us were taken halfway through the hike and I am pointing to the summit that we ended the hike at. It really was incredible!

The start of this hike is so steep (and so is the end) and I was so tired. But we made it and I’m so proud of us. We are confident that hiking a difficult hike together must be a psychology-approved relationship builder because it’s awesome to accomplish something so hard together. 

Curling

Back in January when we were talking about making goals I decided that in addition to the many things that I am putting my heart and soul into on a daily basis (motherhood, homeschool, homemaking, being a wife, friend, daughter, my stake primary calling, taking care of myself) - I wanted to make ONE goal, but I wanted it to be a fun goal. It took until August, but we finally made that one goal that I made happen: curling! It was kind of a ridiculous goal, but maybe that's why I loved it so much. 

Learning to curl at the Olympic Oval was everything that I wanted it to be! We convinced Jason and Sarah Newbold to come with us, and even though they might have thought we were a little crazy - we all had fun together.  I officially love curling and am already looking forward to coming back again sometime.