Having fun - it is not just for the kids

Celebrating New Years with a child is definitely different from years' past. Half of the battle is staying awake until midnight. I do have to admit, in the three years since my child has been on this earth, this New Years was the only one where we managed to stay awake to watch the ball drop. That alone was quite the accomplishment for us.

This year we tried something new, an idea that was mostly inspired out of our work with our marriage ministry at church, specifically the retreat called  "have fun in marriage." Fun - yes, we have fun as a family and with our little girl, but having fun as a couple is not always easy. By the time the little one is in bed, we are barely keeping our eyes open long enough to watch TV past 10 p.m. Well, okay, maybe I am talking about me, but still...the days wear you out. It is hard to take a step back sometimes and enjoy each other and just have fun.

So I planned something different. We celebrated 2015 in clear high school style. Well, high school for one of us, that is. We played games, watched a movie, and enjoyed some pizza and some wine coolers. Yes, the girl who loves her dark beer actually consumed wine coolers. It did make me take pause to consider how I could have stomached multiple wine coolers in an evening as the sugar is enough to knock anyone out, but it was all in good fun. I wanted to go all high school and load up on sugar and caffeine, too, but let's be real. We are in our 30's. I am pretty sure that would be a bad idea.

Regardless, the point is we had fun. We had fun as a couple, and we did it in something so simple and so easy but yet so...fun. It did not involve getting a sitter and going out for an expensive dinner, while yes, those dates are fun, too. The thing that made it special to us was that it was time for just the two of us to relax and just be people for once. Not just Mom and Dad or attorney and engineer. No work, no crying kid, just fun and silly fun at that.

I am not one to really do the new year's resolution thing. I do not want to set myself up to fail and see yet another aspiration fall away over too much expectation and pressure. That being said, though, I think having a little more fun is something we can all benefit from. I would not call it a resolution or a goal. It's more of a change of perspective and a reminder to take that step back. Work is not that important and just because we are parents does not mean we lost our identity as a couple in love. So I am promising to myself to make that extra effort to have more fun. Relax and do something that makes me laugh or makes T smile. Because in the end, it is those memories that are the ones that matter.