October 19th marked mine and Matt's 11th anniversary. For the past 3 or 4 years I've planned a big anniversary trip (as in 3 days and 2 nights away) but this year with Matt's school schedule, Daisy being 6 months old and still nursing, and a tighter budget, we made no trip. We're hoping next month to get a date together and next year to resume the trips, but in the meantime I knew I had to get creative to make this year's anniversary fun.On Monday night I gave Matt a card with "Choose Your Own (Anniversary) Adventure" written on the top, instructing him to choose from a list of opposites. Each day he would receive a text letting him know what that day's gift would be, based on the words he'd chosen. These were all things we could do to spend time together like we would on a date, but at home, after kids were in bed. However, the list was very vague (on purpose) so it kept him guessing. For example, some choices were "hot or cold" (bonfire, or sitting on the porch swing one evening), "fast or slow" (action movie or romantic comedy/chic flick movie) "sweet or salty" (snacks to munch on while we listen to Mark Twain's "Diaries of Adam and Eve" and also some Bertie and Jeeves, both audiobooks on our Kindle) "big or little" (breakfast, either big spread or simple, served in bed), and "in or out" (go on a date in town for dessert and either eat at Sonic and stay in the car, or go somewhere else and get out of the car to go in the restaurant.) He chose cold, slow, sweet, and little, and in and made guesses as to what he thought each would be, and got some almost right. But having two parts to the gift (such as sweets and audiobook) made it pretty nigh impossible to guess it completely. It's hard to pull anything over on him; he knows too well how I think, so this insured I got to actually surprise him.
The kids got excited about this too, knowing Daddy was getting something special each day. They got in on the fun and gave him little gifts too. One day he was in town eating lunch with the pastor, so while he was inside we snuck an "I love you" card in his car for him to find when he got out. When Matt called I was busy so Lissy answered the phone and after chatting with him, handed it to me. I tried to act like I didn't know what he was talking about when he said something about a note, but he laughed and told me that the first thing Lissy said to him was "Did you find a surprise in your car?!"On the night when we were going to watch a movie I gave him a message he had to decode to find out his gift. I found a devotional book on our shelf for couples and circled the letters on random pages to spell out REDBOX, then wrote down the page numbers to be the code. I scrambled the word so he wouldn't guess it right away. Being Matt he started at the end of the cipher and found "__ E, X". He grinned and said "I already know what this word is gonna be." Then I reminded him it was scrambled. :). After he decoded it I gave him a wooden box filled with Hershey's Nuggets like treasure in a chest, covering up the pirate movie I'd rented. This was by far the kids' favorite of his gifts since it involved chocolate enough for everybody.
It's been fun getting creative to come up with ideas that don't cost much and aren't completely centered around food. Favorite meals and desserts are usually the major feature of celebrations around here. And I went ahead and told Matt what the other "adventure" would have been each day when he received the gift he'd chosen. As I suspected (and hoped) he liked both ideas, so I told him we didn't have to stop after the last one he'd chosen. We could just keep on going into next week. :)
Happy Anniversary, my love. This week of mini-dates has been a lot of fun, celebrating the love that began our adventure 11 years ago.
