Date Night

We've all heard that it's good for a marriage to have regular/weekly date nights. Having a healthy relationship with one's spouse has positive effects on children, many studies show. Well, we used to have weekly date nights before Scarlett was born. We tried to continue that after she was born but it turned out to be too difficult so we stopped soon after she was born. We've definitely had a few date nights where Scarlett's grandparents babysat and had a great time while we were out. It's easy for us to leave Scarlett with her grandparents because we trust them. However, they don't live close enough for us to have regular date nights. Last night was the first time we actually hired a babysitter. I can't believe that it took us two years to finally hire a babysitter. We asked one of Scarlett's daycare providers to come and watch her while we went out to see The Killers - our first concert in I don't know how long. Luckily, the concert venue is only 3 miles from our house, which made it a bit easier to leave her with a non-family member. The concert started at 7:30pm so we asked her babysitter to arrive at 6:30pm to allow enough time for us to go over Scarlett's routine with her.

It's funny that we didn't even "plan" for the concert, besides finding a babysitter. We had not given any forethought as to what we should bring or whether we should be excited about the concert. We left Scarlett with the babysitter at 7pm and arrived at the concert in time to see the opening band. We didn't have time to grab our camera and we weren't really "pumped up" to see The Killers, mostly because we were more worried about making sure the babysitter knew what she should do with Scarlett for her nighttime routine. Here's the first sign that it's been too long since we've gone to a concert or that I'm getting to be too old. I had totally forgotten that there would be opening bands, since it wasn't stated on the ticket. I was expecting to see The Killers soon after the 7:30pm start time. So two opening bands later, it's almost 9:30pm and we're not sitting there enjoying our night out to the fullest. Instead, we're thinking about how we could have waited two hours later to show up at the concert and save 2 hours worth of babysitter fee (that could have bought us 2 extra beers!). As we sat through two horrible (in my opinion) opening bands, I was also complaining about how loud and annoying the base was. How old am I?!!!

When The Killers finally came on, they opened with my favorite song. The rest of the concert was really enjoyable and fun. We finally got home around 11:30pm and I was already dreading having to wake up at 6am because that's when Scarlett would probably wake up. (When was the last time I was out that late - oh, that's right, our wedding anniversary.) This experience has definitely made us realize that regular date nights just aren't possible/affordable. How much did this date night cost? Is it sad that we paid more for the babysitter than for a seat at the concert? $111 for two concert tickets, $0 for dinner since we ate before we left, and $75 for the babysitter. That's almost $200. We definitely can't do that on a weekly basis.