The Adventure Challenge Couples Edition Book Will Help You and Your Partner Rediscover Date Night

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My wife and I welcomed our first child, a boy, last year, and I am thrilled to be a father. But along with all the joy have come time constraints time, especially for my wife and I to do things together as a couple. Children don’t exactly allow for many extracurriculars (cue every mom and dad reading this: “Yes, duh.”).

I liked occasionally being able to spontaneously go out for dinner or a movie or a sunset hike. The three of us still get to share plenty of outings together, and I value the time we share as a trio, but it takes more consideration and planning. And packing. So much more packing.

My wife had also been lamenting the relative lack of spontaneity in our lives, so this past Valentine’s Day, I bought her The Adventure Challenge Couples Edition — a book with pages of scratch-off panels hiding date night ideas.

The book is split into several sections, and there’s a handy legend to give you an idea of what you’re getting into via the symbols next to each scratch-off panel. For example, the fork and knife mean the date involves a meal, the car hints you’ll have to go somewhere other than the house, and the baby indicates you’ll need a sitter. (Though the authors and founders of The Adventure Challenge, Bryant Ellis and Ben Day, mention that kids can tag along for many of the itineraries — and everything is SFW.) There are also symbols showing how expensive or affordable the date will be, what time of day is best, and how long it will take.

I recently found my wife paging through the book again, so we took the opportunity to scratch off another panel. The date idea we got was to find a venue with live music and log 30 minutes of total dance time. If we can’t find a location, we have to create our own impromptu dance session with a speaker. The rules are that we have to dance in public and somewhere at least a mile away from our house.

To be clear, I hate dancing. I’m the guy at weddings who will get up for the slow jams and maybe Cotton Eye Joe. But my wife loves it. So, in the spirit of The Adventure Challenge — and because I know it’ll make her happy — I’m going to bust out my best (worst) moves to embrace and reclaim some of that spontaneity.

Really, this book is a gift and guide for creating these experiences for ourselves. There’s even space set aside on every page to stick a picture we take during each date. And if it also gives us some ideas for family-friendly outings that we can take our boy on, even better.

Buy the Adventure Challenge Couples Edition

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