How do you find the time to date when, between the two of you, you minister most Sundays and you have at least 18 rehearsals a month? Oh, and you both have full time jobs. Enter: Adventure Saturday!
Adventure Saturday happened entirely on accident. Rob and I were sitting down to work out our schedules and organize our lives one day at Panera when we realized that there was one Saturday out of the month that we did not have any ministry (or other) obligations. I jokingly said, "That day can be Adventure Saturday!" It's been that way ever since.
Adventure Saturday is one of the pillars of our relationship now. We take one Saturday (sometimes Sunday, you know if you read my last post) of every month to do something together. Just us. No exceptions. Well, sometimes we have to go to work, but no other exceptions. We've become pretty protective over Adventure Saturday. Some of our best memories together have been on these days.
We started dating in April 2015 and our first official Adventure Saturday was June 2015 when we went to my sister's birthday party in Columbus, OH. That's when Rob met some of my family members, including my dad and some of my brothers. They gave him a little trouble at first but they knew he was a good man. Everyone came out friends.
In July that year we went on a bus trip to New York City for a day. We went to the Central Park Zoo and then to see Wicked on Broadway. That day was amazing. According to my phone, we walked 20,243 steps. No one warned us about the subway just not working that weekend so we ended up walking everywhere we went. We even had the typical "bus trip" moment of almost missing our bus home and running through the station onto the bus in just enough time to get a seat together before the bus took off.
Adventure Saturday Highlights:
- August 2015 - MegaFest and the Dallas Zoo in Dallas, TX
- November 2015 - My first trip to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC
- January 2016 - Art museum and ice skating on the National Mall in Washington, DC
- February 2016 - An aquarium, a stage play, and an Irish restaurant in and around Camden, NJ
- March 2016 - Glow in the dark mini golf in Jessup, MD
- April 2016 - Virginia Safari Park in Charlottesville, VA and horseback riding in Knoxville, MD
- June 2016 - Adventure Road Trip to Columbus, OH and Cincinnati, OH and Dayton, OH and Saline, MI
- September 2016 - We got engaged!!!!!
- November 2016 - Engagement photo shoot Northeast, MD
Adventure Saturdays get expensive sometimes, but it's totally worth it. The Adventure Road Trip was close to the best one we've done. We drove around the Midwest and got to meet and really spend time with each other's families. After the engagement my sister commented, "Soon you guys will get to save money by staying in the same hotel room." I. Can't. Wait.
If we don't make each other a priority, it's easy to miss the other person in the hustle and bustle of our schedules. "We'll do that next week." turns into "Did we ever do that?" three months later. We prefer to say, "Did we really do that?" At times it becomes challenging due to family, work, or ministry but we make sure that we find a way. We have to. When it comes down to it, we're working to build a relationship. And believe me, it is work. But sometimes the work turns out to be an Adventure.
