How we get away for our anniversary every year!

So, here is the thing we are neither rolling in the dough or do we have a list of babysitters we can call anytime to watch our kids.  It is a big challenge to go away to celebrate our anniversary but, it is something we have done every year now for 11 years and it has done wonders for our marriage!! We have every excuse in the book why we wouldn’t or shouldn’t go away but, the truth is that we know we have to keep our marriage a priority and reconnect with each other away from the stresses of daily life so, that is what we do.

For us it can be very challenging to find someone we trust to watch our kids.   I know that some of you are blessed with loads of friends and family to always help out and I realize some of you have neither and we fit somewhere in the middle I guess so to go away can be a stretch.  In our early years of marriage we relied mostly on my parents who lived locally, then mainly great friends that we were blessed with and now we are blessed with my sister who lives locally and, still some great friends who will also give us a hand.

As far as money goes, we started doing this in the beginning of our marriage when we literally didn’t have two pennies to rub together and, even though we have come a ways from that, we aren’t crazy rich either so, we have always done trips on a tight budget.  Most years we would go away for a few days and stay overnight somewhere or just go away for the entire day (depending on if we just had a baby).  Again, this may not seem like a big deal to the couples who normally do weekends away but, for us it was more important to be consistent and, celebrate this day rather than let it become something that wasn’t very special at all.  It is a way of telling each other how much we value this relationship and we should rejoice and celebrate that we made it another year by God’s grace!! Every year truly is not something to take for granted and we all need that romantic time away with our spouse whether to keep the flame going or to rekindle the flame that has left, and something about a trip away just you two without any distractions makes that happen.

On a cruise to the Bahamas.

Enjoying Baltimore Harbor and a Tyler Perry play.

So, how do we do it without breaking the bank?

• Look for hotels on priceline and use the name your price feature to save 60% on your hotel! You can specify how many stars you want in a hotel and the area(e.g. near Times Square) so you aren’t all over the place and specify the dates you want, and they choose a hotel for you.  It sounds risky and made me very nervous at first but, we have always gotten great hotels for great prices!
• We look up reviews for restaurants like crazy and, with the reviews come the pricing so we know before we go how much we will be likely to spend at any given place.  We usually do make dinner a treat that we have a bigger budget for but, you don’t have to.  Just being away is a treat.  You don’t need to get the most expensive thing on the menu.
• We stay at places with free continental breakfast or find a great coffee & bagel shop that is cheap and yummy!
• We drive to our location and try to walk everywhere we can.  We just always pray for a nice day and amazingly we have gotten them continuously.

We look up Groupons for fun activities to do for cheap.  We always google free things to do in each city as well, and I’m always amazed how many fun events there are! This is a great way to get to have new experiences for a low price.

So, we just got back from our trip this year to D.C. and my husband planned the trip himself!! Man, did this bless my heart! I could have gone in sat in a park all day and been happy as a clam as long as he planned it and he did a great job! So, here are some things we did…

We started the day at Eastern Market which is a popular, fun outdoor market with a bunch of goodies.

Then we headed to brunch at this amazing restaurant, Barrel and had some amazing farm to table food!!

After some great food we headed  to 2 art museums, one more modern and one traditional.  This was a  new experience for us both so, it was fun to do together.  Ill admit I wasn’t the most mature there, with containing my laughter because, some of the paintings that I saw looked like my toddler may have painted them!

We ended the day at “Lucky Strike” bowling alley which is a really awesome place.  It was different than traditional bowling, with almost a night club meets Dave & Busters feel! Then we finished the night with an insanely good lobster roll from Luke’s Lobster.

This day was just what we needed to refresh our marriage, reconnect and just have some fun together.  I hope I’ve inspired you to go do the same, and go invest in your marriage! Thanks for following!