Our Anniversary Tradition

Last week, Scotty and I celebrated our 16th anniversary. By "celebrated" I mean we remembered it was our anniversary after Scotty had left for work, and we texted each other, "Oh yeah, happy anniversary!" I had to work at the school that morning and then our girls had their dance concert that night, and there wasn't a minute to spare.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

MAY IS CRAY!

Young people everywhere, I urge you to not get married in May! It's too late for me, but you can save yourselves! And your mothers! For heaven's sake... think of your mothers!!! My children will not be granted any wedding funds if they choose to get married in May. 

Or December.

(Oh my gosh, I'm going to be an awful mother-in-law!)

 

Even though Scotty and I didn't get to do anything alone together for our anniversary (but we will... eventually... when it's no longer May... and when we are in the same country) we have a tradition that we were able to squeeze in between dance concerts, church responsibilities, and school functions. 

Since our wedding anniversary marks the day we became a family, we like to do something to celebrate with our kids. Every year (usually on the Monday of our anniversary week, but this time we had to go for Wednesday because our kids got in trouble on Monday for fighting, so their consequence was postponing) we have what we call our "Familyversary Dinner." 

We draw for food assignments (entree, side dish, dessert, drink, etc) and then we go shopping together. Each person picks out whatever they want for their food assignment, and then we come home and prepare the food and eat dinner together. Usually I try to make it "fancy" with a table cloth and candles, but we've had a few close calls with the candles, so we've stopped using them for now. I also used to use wine glasses, but every year someone spills, so I decided they don't spark joy and got rid of them. This year we resorted to paper plates, and we had an extra kid at our house. Whatever. We got it done. 

 

When we started this tradition, we did $5 for each person to get whatever they wanted for dinner, but we usually ended up with a lot of ice cream and cookies or a meal where everything was orangs and covered in cheese. So for the past three years we've done assignments instead to provide a little balance. We still end up eating a lot of junk food, but sometimes there's a nutrient in there. We kind of have to stick with things that are easy to fix since we don't want to come home and spend hours fixing food from scratch. So sometimes the kids end up picking something like Lunchables or mac & cheese. It's all good. We have a lot of fun with it!

This year's menu included:

Daisy (entree): chicken nuggets

Me (entree): Totinos pizza

Nicky (drink): Capri Suns

Eva (side dish): Club crackers and cheese

Zoe (side dish): strawberries

Scotty (dessert): pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

 Here's to 16 years as a family! With many more to come!