The end of August is a busy celebration time for us. Our third wedding anniversary was last week and Farmer Doc’s birthday was earlier this week. Why did we schedule our wedding so close to his birthday, you might ask?
Believe it or not, we scheduled our wedding to be after fair season, but before college football season. And with a 3-week state fair in August and Purdue football starting the first weekend in September, we weren’t left with a lot of options!
(Seriously, that’s why.)
It’s all about priorities.
This year we built our new (and improved!) house and moved in late in April. We finished up the last few things that needed to be finished over the next month or so (well, almost all of the last few things). Then we jumped right into fair season. Summer is always busy for us with fairs and traveling (especially this year), and finally we throw in two important celebrations at the end to round it out.
We do usually celebrate our birthdays and anniversaries with small gifts. And for the last two years we have gotten away for a long weekend to celebrate our anniversary. This year, we decided that the new house was the birthday presents for both of us. And since at least one of us was gone part of every week in July and August, we decided to stay home for our anniversary.
That’s not really true. We didn’t decide to stay home, we decided not to take a vacation. I didn’t stay home at all – I went to the Indiana Farm Bureau Delegate Session in Indianapolis to talk policy for part of that weekend.
So I’m a little torn here. The presents don’t bother me. Trust me, this house is present enough! But we skipped our new tradition of a long weekend in a Kentucky state park.
We saved some money, sure (and that will come in handy to pay for this new house!). But part of the point of going away for those few days was to get away from “regular” life and have a chance to reconnect. And we didn’t get to do that in the same way this year. We did go to San Diego earlier in the summer for the AVMA convention, but that felt more like work than “quality time.”
How do you celebrate big events like birthdays and anniversaries? DO you celebrate them? Are planned vacations (even mini-vacations) important to maintaining your relationship, or do you find ways to keep that connection during “regular” life?
My husband, Mike, and I are celebrating our 38th wedding anniversary today. We are not big on gifts and hunting season starts this time of year, so we are sometimes apart on our special day. Not to fret. We plan intermittent getaways in the fall and winter. Summertime we are busy farming. We enjoy taking evening walks around the farm as a way of connecting during “regular” life.
Nori – Thanks for your comment. And congratulations on your 38th anniversary! We’re just getting started with only 3 years under our belts, and I’m sure we’ll figure things out a little more as we go. 🙂
For our anniversary celebration, we pick one night to go away, as close as possible to our wedding date. This year that wasn’t until August (we got married in June). And we go away for one night, overnight, somewhere besides our house. 🙂 We don’t do cards or presents. We usually discuss holidays like Christmas ahead of time to see if we are going to do a gift or not. For birthdays we usually go out to dinner and have a card. We do try to discuss things ahead of time so we know each other’s expectations and no one is disappointed. Does it take the surprise out of it? Yes. Have I ever been disappointed? Nope! 🙂
We agree with you, it’s more about reconnecting. Taking a moment from our lives to look at each other go “wow…you really like me and I really like you!” 🙂