Tips for keeping the romance alive with your spouse

We all know the jokes about marriage and the way that marriage absolutely kills off romance. You know how it goes: if you really, really, really want to destroy your romantic connection with the love of your life, just marry them and it'll be gone just like that! There have been countless TV episodes making fun of the lack of romance in marriage, countless movies about it, and who knows how many different comic strips about it.
However, your marriage does not have to be the death sentence for the romance in your relationship. There are a number of ways that you can keep the romance alive with your spouse even though you're no longer in the impassioned clutches of teenage puppy-love. Let's face it: marriage entails big responsibilities and the kind of day-to-day existence that can tend to shut down the special moments that we think of as romantic. But the key to keeping the romance alive with your spouse is to integrate romance into those day by day different things that you end up having to do together, like eating dinner and running the kids around on errands and those sorts of things.
You have to work hard on maintaining the romance in your marriage. After the first few months together, romantic things just aren't going to happen spontaneously. But you can't let romance take a back seat to all of things like choosing a mortgage, picking out a new car, having a family, changing diapers, and all of those different sorts of things. So there are a number of different things that you need to do to make sure that you maintain that element of romance in your life.
First of all, your family has a schedule. You have lessons for your kids, you might be in school, you might both have to work and have to coordinate your work schedules, and so on and so forth. But it's important that you also schedule time to spend with your spouse. If you don't schedule time to spend just with your spouse, then those romantic moments will not happen. Write in time to spend one-on-one with your spouse, or else the demands of your spouse's boss and your kids will end up crowding out any time that you and your spouse could spend together.
If you can't find a babysitter or you can't afford a babysitter, then stay up late after your kids have gone to bed. Have a date night that's just at home. Clean up your house, turn on some music, light some candles, and hide all of the kids' toys. Make banana splits together or ice cream sundaes, buy some special food, and eat something different. If the two of you like to play board games, play some of those, turn on a romantic movie, or find a nice racy game that will encourage some activities later on in the evening.
Don't talk about the things that you are stressing you out, unless they need to be worked out before you and your spouse can enjoy each other. Instead, just focus on the two of you and creating a romantic moment for each other that exists outside of all of your day to day stuff.
Make sure that you do small things for each other. Write notes for each other on the bathroom mirror. Always say please or thank you. Pick up your spouse's favorite treat, or some flowers or something. Surprise each other. Just always work on doing small things that are not part of your daily routine so that you can maintain that romantic element in your marriage.