This weekend Pat arranged for him and me to go out of town for a night, and for Ben to spend the night with my parents, Meo and Omi. This was a big deal as it would be the first night we have spent away from Ben. Exciting and scary!!
I'll start the whole weekend story with our actual anniversary. Pat and I don't go huge for anniversaries normally. We like to acknowledge the day, but we don't want to spend a ton of money. We're happy we are married every day (okay, almost every day ;)), so there doesn't feel like a big need to go all out for an anniversary. We do like to exchange little gifts. I make us follow the traditional gifts for every year. This year the gift is wood. We also go out to dinner. On our first date Pat took me to a little Italian restaurant in Chicago. It was a local one right by the bank he was working at during that time. It was delicious. We went back there for a few years to celebrate our anniversaries. But now that we are out in the burbs, we don't really feel like heading all the way downtown just for dinner. We still try to do Italian for our anniversary dinner, but I didn't know what Pat had planned yet on Friday.
The actual day of our anniversary was a normal day. We both had to work. Friday's we also go grocery shopping. Super romantic Friday nights, huh? ;) We like it. We get to make sure we have something fun and yummy for dinner, and we get that activity crossed off the weekend to do list. With Ben it still works out for us to do the shopping in the evening. It's a little rushed to get him home in time to have solids, but we make it work. We did splurge and get one of those cookie cakes that says Happy Pi Day. Now, yes, we did get married on Pi day. Which makes the cookie cake kind of anniversary cake. But no, we did not get married on that day because it was Pi day. While I am a huge science geek and love math, really it just kind of happened. I realized it after we booked the venue, but there was no good reason to change the date. So now Pi day is just extra special for us.
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We exchanged gifts Friday night too. As I said, this year the gift is wood. Well, Pat and I are a good match because we both went with picture frames!! How many wood things can you really get someone? I am not into wood jewelry, so that was out for Pat. I considered looking into getting some sort of tree. Well, we don't have anywhere to plant a tree. I don't want to have to keep track of a gift certificate for any period of time. And trees are expensive! We try to keep costs down when exchanging gifts. I thought about a houseplant, but Dagger likes to eat plants. Yes, she is strange. Pat thought about different decorative items or knickknacks. With a child who is set to go mobile at any time, we are not at a point in our lives where we need or want more 'stuff' out. Books could be an option, being made of paper which comes from trees. But we both did books for the first anniversary gift of paper. I think we both made a great choice.
The frames were different. Pat got me a two part frame. One has a great picture of us from our wedding, and the other part has a card that says "Patrick and Kimberly, Fiver wonderful years-45 more to go." When we were engaged I used to tease Pat that he owed me 50 years. I'm glad to see he is keeping track! It is very sweet. I got Pat two frames actually. One is a two part desk from with some great pictures of Ben.
Aren't they great! It will look perfect on his desk at work. For the other picture I drew out our 'family tree.' (Tree, wood, see what I did there? ;)) It just has us as the trunk, our parents as the roots, and Ben as the only branch right now. I left plenty of room for potential future children and grandchildren. As I said, the artwork isn't professional or anything. I mean, I did it. But I didn't want to spend a lot of money to get it done. And Pat seems quite happy with the result.
Now we just need to decide where to hang up these great new pictures! I really love our little family, and I love having pictures of us in our home. I was never much of a picture person before Ben. I was lucky and had a lot of friends who were, so I could always get a picture if I needed it. But now that we have Ben I am picture crazy! It makes me a little sad to think that we don't really have that many pictures of Pat and I from these first 5 years. I am more than making it up for it now. I am trying to get as many family pictures as possible. I want to have a ton of pictures of Ben, because he is adorable and I want to remember every moment of his childhood. I also want to record Pat and me during this time too. I want Ben to be able to see how we were as a family when he was a baby. I am excited to hear him joke about how young we look, or how silly our clothes are. So many moms stay out of the pictures because they think they don't look their best. Well, I still feel that way. But I know I'm going to be sad if I look back and never see myself in any of the pictures. I want proof I was here too!
That was our actual anniversary. I like that Pat and I agree that celebrating something on the actual day is great, but not exactly necessary. As long as we acknowledge the event at some point we are happy. So for the actual day of our anniversary, this was great. We got to spend time with Ben, exchange gifts, and eat yummy cookie cake. Good times all around. Then we got to get ready for the weekend adventure...
-Kim
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