The love of my life will be turning 26 tomorrow. It’ll be our sixth time celebrating his birthday together and I vividly remember each year. Pretty soon we’ll look up and realize we’re knocking on a decade of being together. It’s truly crazy how fast time flies when you’re having fun. 

Every year I want to do these cute, elaborate displays of affection and this is the year that I finally decided to put my thoughts into action. My favorite part of gift giving is seeing the recipient’s initial reaction. I also really enjoy doing research and trying to figure out the best things to buy that would bring the most enjoyment. 

I think I did pretty well with my gifting this year. You could say only time will tell this late in the game, but I started super early and worked hard to find options that fit him and his personality. I made sure the gifts weren’t super generic and instead more personalized. He’s been wanting a PlayStation 5 and I was definitely formulating a plan to surprise him with it, but it ended up being a little more difficult to keep a surprise than I was anticipating. It’s actually pretty difficult spending roughly $600 without your spouse accidentally finding out about it. Plus, the timing wasn’t necessarily right to cash out on that big of a gift. 

Now in about four months, things open up a lot more. We’ll have met our goal that we’ve been grinding towards and will get to include dedicated fun money in our monthly budget to splurge with. That’s when surprising my honey with an elaborate and expensive gift will be much easier to actually pull off. 

Not only is his birthday tomorrow, but Valentine’s Day is in 11 days and our 2nd wedding anniversary is a little under a month away on March 5th. With that little bit of time in between, I knew I had to get my act together quick, fast, and in a hurry. 

Before we got married, the important gifting days of birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries were more evenly dispersed. There were two occasions to celebrate in October and two in February. Now that our wedding anniversary is in March though, it’s lowkey a marathon to make sure I don’t drop the ball in getting him things he really enjoys and appreciates for each special event. 

He gave me a good number of topics and options to work from, which is so vital in making sure I buy things he likes. I have a secret hiding spot in my home where I can stash random items until I’m ready to present them in a gift bag or wrap them in a beautifully crafted bow. As it is now, our home has a decent amount of hiding spots which will definitely come in handy once I’m playing Santa Claus and wrapping all the gifts on Christmas Eve. 

Truth be told, it’s so difficult for me to keep the secret. Ever since I started buying things, I’m really excited for the festivities to begin just so I can share his gifts. It fills me with such joy to just have a surprise to look forward to. I try my best to not give him any hints on the gifts either. While he might see me get a package out of the mailbox, I make extra sure to remove the shipping label that shows the address where it came from so I don’t give anything away. 

Even though he always says he doesn’t want anything, I think it’s important to shower him with things that he likes, needs, and just doesn’t want to buy himself. He goes above and beyond for our family and the least I can do is make sure he feels well appreciated and loved. Life is already incredibly difficult so I try my best to be his peace and help alleviate as much stress as possible. 

He literally supports everything that I do and he’s always there to help me if I ever need it. He picks up my slack and keeps our household running incredibly efficient. When it’s time to celebrate, I want to make sure I go above and beyond to show him how much I care and appreciate him. 

And, before we even get started, no I haven’t always been this focused on making sure he feels appreciated. As a woman, it’s so easy to just accept all the gifts, love, adoration, flowers, and affection without even realizing that your spouse, boyfriend, partner, etc. wants to feel appreciated too. It might come in different forms like a back massage and a few hours of uninterrupted gaming time versus an expensive dinner and some perfume, but it’s incredibly vital to staying connected to your partner. 

One of the best things about growing up and becoming an adult is being able to create the life you’ve always wanted. Once we grow up, we often try to experience things that we weren’t able to when we were younger. For me personally, this shows itself in my desire to go above and beyond for celebrations.

I usually don’t do much for my birthdays because I don’t want to be disappointed. The worst feeling is getting your hopes up that you’ll get showered with love and affection all to realize that people either forgot it was your birthday or just flat out didn’t care about celebrating you. To mitigate those bad feelings, I usually just stay low, keep things super lowkey and easy, and treat it like it’s another day. 

I always thought I’d break that routine with my kids because part of the joy of actually being a kid is celebrating the light hearted aspects of life. Since we’re still a couple years away from that time in our lives, I’ll instead just get into my bag by celebrating Kris first. I like making a big deal about surprises just to keep life from getting monotonous and too serious. You’d be surprised just how far that extra effort goes in nurturing a relationship. 

If you enjoyed this episode, let me know by giving this video a thumbs up, leaving a comment, and subscribing to my channel. I’ll see you in the next episode! 

Signed, 

Jessica Marie