Good Ideas for keeping the connection

1. Phone-free dinner together, every night. On occasion this can't happen (my husband is a public accountant so sometimes he is on clients super late), but 90% of the time it does! During the week & every weekend, we walk our dog together. Even doing fun random things like driving to mcdonalds for ice cream at 9PM, or deciding to put away laundry, connects us because the TV is off and we don't have work or our phones in front of us. We do date nights too, but these are shorter/quicker things that aren't an entire evening.

2. We are big campers, even in fall/winter. We don't have a camper, but we have rented several for winter camping or done something like a yurt/cabin rental in the woods and snow-shoed, dog sled, tubing, hot springs, sleigh ride, or snow mobiling. We also like doing staycations, just going to Denver (we live about 30 minutes away) and staying in a hotel for a night. We also occasionally blow up an air mattress in our living room & "camp out" for the night. I typically plan these in advance and surprise him, but we order something like chinese or mexican delivery food, then shut off all the lights & just sleep downstairs with a ton of pillows & blankets & our fireplace on.

So, I'm super lucky to live in a city where my tax dollars fund the zoo, art museum, history museum, botanical garden, and science center. Since there's no admission charge, we end up at those pretty often! But even if we did have to pay admission, we'd probably get a membership to the zoo. This past weekend, we spent Saturday morning at the zoo (free), ended up going to a local winery in the afternoon (spent $20 on a bottle), and browsed around the mall near my house after. It was a pretty cheap day and we had a ton of fun.
Two of our favorite trips were also among our most affordable! We had an amazing time in Bardstown & Louisville, KY (a good "halfway" point for us when we were long distance in St. Louis & Michigan), and a trip we took to Michigan's Upper Peninsula (Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, and Tahquamenon Falls) was one of our favorites.

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MrsD.

I LOVE the "camp out" night. That sounds like SO much fun!

My husband really misses when we were dating and we'd stay up watching movies from my bed, because now our only tv is in our living room, and he used to love that. Actually...that's the kind of thing I want to get out of him LOL instead I get them randomly. He has a hard time sharing his emotions, but when he does it stops and makes me take it all in because its so rare.

We've never rented a camper, we only tent camp, and we really enjoy renting cabins in TN, but that's a bit out of our way and cost a bit. I've looked at renting some cabins via AirBNV in my area, but darn Airbnb is not as easy as it seems. the filters really stink, and no one truly understands what "dog friendly means". If my dog has to be in a crate, it's not dog friendly.

Thanks for sharing!

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Kate,

How many miles away was the halfway point for you both?

Man - that would be awesome to have free admission. We do enjoy going to the zoo but the free days are so packed with families. We haven't even been once this year...kind of disappointing.

We just bought some fishing kayaks that we look forward to using next year. It will get us out of the house more, cause us to exercise more, and have us to multiple things we love. Camping, hiking, kayaking, and fishing. Best part our dog can join us, too! ha, but we can do non-dog days as well. Sometimes you just need just the two of you for true peace.

What's funny is your experience at the zoo reminds me of some nights we just go walk the mall near our house, it can be super fun, even if we don't buy anything. People watching, looking at things, just talking and walking.

We were long distance between St. Louis and Ann Arbor (FH was starting grad school). Kentucky isn't on the way, but Bardstown was 5 hours for me and 6 hours for FH. STL to Ann Arbor is about 8 hours, so it was less driving than if we'd driven between the two.

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Kate - makes sense. Thank you for sharing.

We do a lot of "weekend getaways". It's easier for us both working to just do a bunch of smaller long weekends than to do a big vacation every year. We LOVE camping. Even if it's cold. We just like to sit around the fire, grill, eat and enjoy each other's company. We also love going to natural springs. I'm not sure if you live anywhere near any, but we kayak at one about 2 hours from our house and it's such a fun getaway and cost us nothing but gas and food. We also make an effort to watch "our show" without our phones. I know it's not super connected, because we aren't really talking. But it gets our face out of our electronics and we just laugh and watch tv and relax together. Is there a beach near you? We like to go to the beach (even when it's super cold outside) and just lay there and talk and relax. Dinners are always nice. Every Sunday (when we're both home - he works out of town a lot), we have a tradition. We grill steaks, make all the sides, and actually sit at the dinner table and have a meal together. It's a nice time right before the hustle and bustle of the week.

Sometimes we just cut off the electronics and just have a conversation just the two of us