Date Coupons

My kids have recently committed to not eat any sugar for a whole year (there's a pretty big chunk of change involved in the endeavor so don't feel too bad for them - besides, I have a feeling there's going to be some cheating going on - Spanky, I'm talking to you).  Usually for Valentine's Day I just give them a useless hunk of junk from the dollar store with a few treats thrown in.  Because kids are dumb and they don't know the difference.  But this year, with the whole "no sugar" thing (which they may or may not be adhering to) I've struggled with what exactly to give them.  For the most part I don't really believe in giving them full fledged gifts for anything except Christmas and their birthdays (truth be told, we've been known to "forget" to give them birthday presents before - oopsy).  And wasn't Christmas like, yesterday?  I'm sick of stuff.  I didn't want to give them just another thing to unwrap and not care about.  

Ryan and I have been talking a lot lately about how we want figure out a way to spend more one on one time with the kids.  They need it.  Especially the boys.  Sometimes it seems like days or even weeks will go by before I realize that I haven't spent any time with them individually.  It's all just a whirlwind of coming and going, and helping with homework and scouting, and driving them to lessons and hollering at them to get their jobs done, and then having the cops show up because they've been riding their mini motorcycle in the neighbor's driveway, when clearly the street is a much safer place to be.  I speak the truth.  Douche bag neighbor called the cops, because he is a stellar human being.  Anyway, I just mean to say that I know they need some time with us. Individually. Alone.  Away from the chaos that has become our lives.

SO!  We've decided that instead of giving them more stuff accompanied by sugary crap they're not supposed to be eating anyway (but probably still are), we'd give them something else.  Our time.  Which is something we should be giving them anyway but apparently we both failed parenting school and now we have to make our kids believe that having time with us is a rare and valuable gift not to be taken for granted.

We came up with 1 special activity per month that we thought they'd be excited about doing with one of us (Ryan and I alternate every month).  I made little coupons and printed them out on some thick card stock.  Then I put each date coupon in it's own envelope and labeled it with the month they'll get to open it.  I figured that they can open their envelopes on the first day of every month and we'll put their coupons on the "date chart" I made.  The coupons can't come down until they've actually gone on their date for the month.  Hopefully, having their coupons staring us down every day will help motivate us to follow through.  Also, I'm planning to take a few pictures on every date so that next year for Valentines Day we can give them some sort of memory book about the fun things we've done.  See how I so craftily drag this idea out so I don't have to think of something for next year?  I suck at parenting.

But I'm kind of excited to give these to the kids over a big Valentine's dinner tomorrow.    

These are just a few of their date coupons.  They're each getting 12.  It's going to be a long year.  

We debated whether or not to include activities that cost money because we wanted this to be more about spending time together, not necessarily spending money.  In the end though, we decided that having a few outings that cost money wouldn't make a difference.  We chose some things that we thought would be meaningful to each of them individually, and also some things that were kind of generic that we thought all of them would like. 

Oh, and just so you know, Peanut Baby isn't getting any coupons.  I gave her some boob coupons about a year ago (you guys, she's almost ONE) and she has cashed them ALL in.