Mom and Dad's night out

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My husband and I are part of a catholic group of couples who get together once a month. We discuss our everyday lives as a couple, as parents and educators, as members of our community, and try to articulate all these things with our lives as Catholics. The group is oriented by Sister Nadia, a german nun who is the funniest and most intelligent woman I know.

We started this group when we were all still dating. All the couples had been dating for over a year, some of us were long time friends, others were brought to the group by our priest. We all felt the need to prepare for marriage in a more serious way. In the beginning the group was oriented by a couple who were in their early thirties, had been married for 7 or 8 years and had 3 children. They shared their experience with us and helped us prepare for what was to come.
Some of the couples who started this group broke up along the way and ended up eventually marrying other people, other couples came into the group later. But eventually we all got married and the group evolved. We were no longer preparing for marriage, we were living it and still felt the need for guidance, support, advice and simply sharing experiences. We became friends, real friends. The couple who started orienting the group had 2 more children and moved on and Sister Nadia took over.

We have learned a lot with this group, almost all the couples had children (some have 3 already!) and we help each other to be better parents, better husbands and wives, and most of all, better Christians. Sometimes instead of a regular meeting we take that time to pray together, to pray for each other. We meet all the time outside of the meetings, we call each other, we get together for dinner or movies.

Every month we choose something that we must do until the next meeting, in order to reflect about and put into practice what we discussed. This month we decided every couple should take at least one evening out for themselves, go out for dinner without the kids and just talk about whatever we want to. We thought it would be easy but our next meeting is next Tuesday and we still haven't done it. So tonight we are leaving R with my parents and we are going out to dinner alone, just the two of us. I made reservations for a really fancy restaurant and I'm looking forward to it. It almost sounds pathetic that we need to be "forced" into going out together doesn't it?