nerd love

newly engaged us. san francisco, april 2002

Look at us. 

Love in bloom. Twitterpation! 

The world (or at least the Golden Gate Bridge) at our finger tips. 

We were married three months later, and quickly settled into newly wedded bliss. 

Eating every meal together. Grocery shopping together. Signing up for classes at school......together, and skipping merrily across campus hand in hand, cartoon birds all-a-flutter.

We were set.....right? 

I mean, after you get married, you're good to go--Happily Ever After is what they call it, I think.

oh....wait...you have to WORK at marriage, right? 

yes you do.

We have been married for almost 10 years. 

(TEN YEARS. I cannot tell you enough how much this boggles my mind daily!! where does time go?) 

Ten years later, life is wonderful, and life is busy. 

 School/work/life/blahblahblahboring. 

But with the busyness, we just can't do everything together anymore (gasp!)  

If you have ever read any literature on happy marriages, they will all give the same piece of advice. 

DATE. 

Get out! Spend time together! 

One on one. 

Invite those cartoon birds to sit upon your shoulder and whistle a tune!

But not just date......date often.

ha! 

Let me tell you a story: 

Where we live right now is just.....just.....er, a, let's just say it's funny. 

Yes, funny is a good word, for now, and fits best since this is a non-swearing blog. 

So yeah, it's funny. 

If people aren't old, they are super old. And if by some slim chance they are not old or super old, they are mostly likely just weird, living in an old persons basement. 

Can you visualize where I live now? 

(be sure to visualize really nice lawns though, note the old people)

And since we have no family around for exactly one bazillion miles.........we don't go out. 

ever. (hangs head)

sad, but true. 

We joke that we get dates quarterly, when we visit family.  We joke, but that my friends is a fact. 

We are lucky that a few times a year grandmas LOVE to take the Littles for days at a time, 

so we can go on super dates, and spend extra time together. 

So we DO have that going for us, and we very much look forward to our quarterly visits with each other.

But we have a few tricks up our sleeve, yes, we do. 

It would be really easy (seriously, sooo easy) to throw our hands up in the air and give up. 

"See you in a few years!" I would say,

"Maybe I'll bump into you sometime!" he would mostly likely say back.

That would be our easiest option.

But, if you know anything about marriage, or if you read the first few lines of this very blog post, 

then you know,

marriage takes work. 

And so, we are working, together--very hard, at finding time here and time there for each other.

And we will take it any way we can get it.

We have weekend nights where we get the kids to bed early, with a movie on the laptop in their "fort", and they just think it's the BEST (poor things have no idea we are shooing them away!) We make sure to tell them that it's OUR date night, because we like them to know how important it is for us to spend time together. We tuck them in, and then share a treat on the couch while we watch some kind of nerdy documentary.

We play Scrabble. 

We actually kind of play alot of Scrabble, and that paired with the documentary thing pretty much confirms the fact that we are indeed, nerds. 

oh, nerd love.

We go to the gym. 

"BORING!" you yell at me. But wait, let me finish. 

We are not side by side on the Stairstepper in our matching sweatbands. 

We are not that nerdy, please believe me. 

Our gym has a rock wall that up until last month we had never used. Never. In five years. Why? It had never even crossed my mind! 

But then we realized......wait.....the kids are playing happily in their part of the gym.....why don't we play too? So we've been climbing. And we LOVE it. It's something active, which is kind of our thing, and it's time alone, together, helping each other up this big color-coded wall. 

(insert metaphor for life)

We play as a family.....lots. 

Within the first week Robby and I had met, we went snowboarding together. 

We played together from there on out.

We had FUN. 

We love getting out and having adventures with the kids--even though it's not exactly one on one time, 

it still reminds us of what brought us together in the first place. lots of playing. lots of fun. 

So there you have it. It's a short list, but for now, it's working for us. 

And we are working hard at it. 

Our last "real" date with the usual dinner/movie/lip-gloss-wearing, was in early December, but for now we are filling our weeks with smaller activities, 

and we honestly feel like we are better AND closer because of it. 

I'm curious, what makes your marriage work? 

Do you go on weekly dates? Do you get creative and lock your kids in their rooms too? I'd love to hear it--we are always looking for new ideas to try, especially if they are extra nerdy.

Happy Valentines Day!

if you are looking for an extra special treat to make your extra special someone, here are some valentiney ideas:

chocolate cupcakes with cherry mascarpone frosting 

chocolate layer cake with whipped vanilla cream, raspberries, and chocolate buttercream

chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream

angel food cake

chocolate and coconut milk cake

black raspberry and chocolate chunk ice cream

strawberry and vanilla bean ice cream

our personal family valentine favorite, a giant pizookie