It's safe to say when it comes to celebrating around our house, we do things very simple. So simple in fact, that it's almost like no celebration at all. I've always known John wasn't the guy to wine and dine, surprise me with over-the-top gifts or even possibly remember a special day. In fact, on our first Christmas together, John placed a white envelope beneath our Christmas tree and I was elated each day as I walked by it secretly hoping it was a gift certificate to the mall. A few days before Christmas we decided to open our gifts to each other. He opened his presents first and then I opened my present: a Whataburger coupon for a Whata-chicken sandwich that expired only 6 days after Christmas. I thought it was a joke. I laughed and then I cried. I honestly couldn't believe it.
Similar gifts followed as holidays and birthdays passed. A heart cutout of a red advertised paper for Valentine's Day, a ceramic computer with a small balloon following another Valentine's Day purchased one day later because it was on clearance, a stack of white envelopes for my birthday with a note written on each envelope: spend this money at a store, spend this money at another store and then spend this money at this store and my most recent Christmas present, a roll of toilet paper.
Believe it or not, I knew this is who he was when I married him and although I'm embarrassed to say this it was definitely a question I had to ask myself when I decided to marry him. Would I care if he forgot my birthday? Would it be OK if he didn't get me something for Christmas? It's obvious what my answers were as I married him 10 years ago this month.
And on that first anniversary of marriage John spent his day at JelloFest in Austin. Afterall his favorite band at the time was playing and he was "working" to get the bands to play in San Antonio. Needless to say, I spent our anniversary sitting in our apartment five months pregnant.
Our second, third, fourth, fifth, & sixth anniversary consisted of picking up Carrabba's and eating together at home with our little girl, Ashley, a box of our favorite candies, a couple sodas and the movie 50 first dates. I'm also pretty sure a card was given here and there to celebrate another year of living the good life together.
I decided for our 7th anniversary we would start a new tradition. We would take our family photos on this day every year. It gave us a reason to get dressed up, it captured our family at this time and John didn't really like to take pictures so how could he possibly say no on our anniversary. So on our 7th anniversary our little family got all fancy for our session with the photographer and once the session was over, we headed down to Carrabba's to continue our tradition.
The 7th year tradition didn't last very long and on our 8th and 9th anniversary, we went back to eating at Carrabba's and then headed back home to prepare for upcoming concerts at Josabi's.
As you can imagine I was a little concerned that our 10th anniversary would be similar to almost every other anniversary. I will be completely honest and say that I was a little sad to think about what it would be like. There was no way we could have 10 years of marriage and not do something a little different or something extra special. In fact, when my birthday passed a few months ago and a card was put in my lap that simply read Happy Birthday, I wanted to crawl in a hole and cry. It was hopeless to think that we may do something special and different for our anniversary.
Fast forward two months to just yesterday. John mentioned we were celebrating our anniversary a few days early and that we would be dropping Ashley off for a play-date and then heading to Carrabba's to celebrate. I looked at him and started crying. I was so sad that his plan was similar to all of the other anniversaries that I didn't even care. In my head I was thinking, "does he not get it?" what is wrong with this guy? And how could he have missed this opportunity to celebrate 10 years together.
I got over my little pity party and decided I would enjoy this anniversary regardless of where we went. So we got ready and dropped Ashley off at her friends house.
We started to make our way to Carrabba's and went down I-10 like normal. Our conversation included where we would sit, would it be at the pasta bar where we met, would we get dessert and if so, would it be John's favorite, do you think they will let us use two coupons, etc... It wasn't until we passed our exit to Carrabba's that I finally realized this year was going to be different.
At this point, it didn't matter where we went or what we did. The only thing that mattered was that he took the time to plan something out for us that was out of his comfort zone. My body perked up and my smile grew to the size of Texas and stayed there the rest of the night. As we passed exits and major highways, I kept throwing out guesses as to what we may be doing, where we might be going and wondering how long he had been planning this date.
He just smiled and then smiled some more. I was simply going to have to wait until we got to where we were going. We finally reached the downtown area and our first stop was A-Awesome tickets. Of course these guys are our friends and I thought maybe John was taking me to the theater or maybe a game or some concert and I wasn't really sure. I quickly thought -- oh let me look up who's in town followed by - Robin -- just chill out!
John quickly came back out with an envelope and a red tag. John had stopped there to get a parking pass and directions to a place we would be heading later that night.
We parked, grabbed our things and headed downtown towards the Hyatt Hotel. This would be our second stop.
We took a quick photo in the elevator on the ride up to our 11th floor room (with a river view).
Threw our things down and headed to the hotel's happy hour bar. We had a couple glasses of wine and dos XX at the bar.
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| John's Wedding Ring |
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| Cheers |
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| Pretzels |
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| bubbles & lime - Dos XX |
I had to chug the second glass of wine as he had made dinner reservations at Toscana just down the street. So we finished up at the hotel bar and made our way to dinner. Hand-in-hand, like kids in high school, we walked down the street, smiling and laughing and enjoying the time we were spending together. We made our way to the restaurant, ordered a few cocktails and had a wonderful dinner.
John was trying to stall going back to the room as he thought there maybe a surprise coming and didn't want to spoil it so we headed back to the hotel bar where we had just one more glass of wine. We decided to head up to the room and this is what I found when we entered.
WHOAH! Now this was REALLY out of John's comfort zone! We smiled, we laughed and then we threw the roses everywhere! John was looking around the room as if something was missing and it was....There was suppose to be champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries. We laughed and laughed and laughed at the rose petals around the room and then a knock came on the door. A lady was there delivering the champagne and strawberries. She asked if she could come in and John quickly said no. I mean look at that picture! We were obnoxious with those rose petals! It was like having a pillow fight with rose petals! I'm guessing others would've collected them and kept them but we didn't. We simply laughed and then laughed some more!
We cracked open the champagne, made a toast and had the time of our lives!!
For some, this kind of night is normal but for us, this was the most special anniversary we've ever had. It meant more to me than any other date we had ever had and I will continue to remember this forever.
After our date, we decided that each year for the rest of our lives, we would plan a special date NO MATTER WHAT and he would get to plan all of the even years and I would plan the odd years. Our only rule is that we can't do the same thing twice!
