There are some things that really need to be celebrated and one of the most important are the yearly anniversaries of a couple's marriage. Don't you agree?

We all know that to have a successfully lasting relationship it takes work; sometimes that work is pretty hard; sometimes it is easy but it ALWAYS keeps us on our toes and that is a good thing don't you think? 

Now it is true that I am no longer able to celebrate my marriage (sadly a widow) but whenever I was able to do so it usually played out the same - a time to reflect and to promise of hopefully another year together. So I am going to reflect on my anniversaries with a bit of humor (hopefully).

First, my husband and I only celebrated our FIRST anniversary together alone and honestly I don't remember it all.....except we neither one could remember exactly what day we were married so thankfully the marriage certificate was kept in our safe for such things....JANUARY 31st or was it the 30th? That was always the issue and each year thereafter we even had difficulty trying to figure out how long we had been married! LOL I suppose that looking back it was nice that we both understood that we had that in common.....remembering important dates were a struggle.....we were doing good if we remembered each other's birthdays. Ha!

OK, so to continue... our 2nd anniversary began with us having become parents to a bouncing baby boy. Instead of getting a babysitter we took him along with us to celebrate a nice dinner for two (almost...except he was in a carrier and placed between us). But he slept so we did have a nice time together.

Onto the 3rd anniversary - (no I won't bore you with every year) our son was a year older and we again didn't have a babysitter so we took him along with us....he was always well behaved in public so again we had a nice time just not quite as intimate as perhaps it should have been. And we did our usual toast to each other (our son drank milk....lol).

So continuing on each year thereafter, our son somehow always ended up with us on our anniversary dates.....he had the routine down.....and would say "Cheers!" to us over our dinner date....lol 

It didn't actually occur to either my husband or myself until our next to last anniversary celebration  (I think my son was now about 11) that our son really did believe he was part of our "wedding anniversary" - how did we figure that out you ask? He walked up to us one day and said, "Hey guys where are we going for OUR anniversary this year?" Ha! The light bulb went on and my husband and I just stared at each other with a sick smirk on our faces....what had we done? So we had turned our "wedding anniversary" into a "family together anniversary" and my son had every right to think of it that way. 

WELL, so we explained to our son what we celebrated each year and that although we loved him dearly he was actually not part of the "wedding anniversary". Needless to say, the next anniversary we actually went out for a dinner (WITHOUT our son) and laughed about how much we missed not having him there to start the "Cheers!" for us. Ironic that it was our last anniversary.

I reflect back on those days periodically and they were memorable moments that I treasure. I hope that each of you who are reading this will take a few minutes to really reflect on your marriage and how blessed you are to be able to share "another" year with each other AND to be thankful; very thankful.

I can't imagine how it would feel to be married 25 - 60 years and am always very happy for the couple but yes a bit envious. Maybe that is why I enjoy making the wedding anniversary keepsakes....I get to be a part of a couple's special moment....the anniversary! Please check them out with this link https://paperiefiligree.com/collections/anniversary-keepsake-gifts

CHEERS!