A couple Fridays ago, Mike and I saw the opportunity to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary a couple weeks early, and we took it. Our anniversary generally falls around Labor Day, which when we were getting married years before Mike's LE career took off, we thought that was the perfect day to get married because it was so close to a three day weekend.

Fast forward a decade, and nope. It is one of Mike's busiest work weekends, and he is often gone at work more than he is really home for about four or five days! That kind of backfired on us, hm?

Some people we know have taken huge vacations for their 10 year anniversary. We know at least three couples where have taken tropical vacations and were gone for at least two weeks. Since we are in that stage of life right now where that just isn't possible, that was not an option for us. But maybe someday. We have two kids that barely sleep through the night, and we love our family too much to saddle them with sleep deprivation for days at a time.

So we decided to celebrate a couple different ways:

- Go to the "big city" for dinner at my favorite restaurant J Alexanders. We have not been there in nearly four years - right before Grayson was born!

- Have the kids go to the grandparents for one night.

- Get our pictures taken by our friend who is a professional photographer. That's happening in late September.

As a part of the weekend, Mike was in a shooting competition, and I attended that with him. Of all of the LEOs that were there in the competition, I was the only wife. Yep. I was *that* wife. 

Because of a logistics snafu, Mike wasn't able to use the tactical shotgun he had planned to use for the shooting competition, which was kind of a shocker that we didn't actually already own a tactical shotgun! We have a hunting shotgun apparently, but not a tactical one. Don't ask me what the difference is but I think it has something to do with the size of the barrel? Anyway, Mike was in a pinch so he decided maybe he should just invest in one - especially if he wants to do more competitions in the future.

So for a good portion of our anniversary date day, we hung out in a gun store waiting forever to be waited on and then for all the checks and balances to clear before Mike was the proud of owner of Remington something or the other. :)

After that we headed north but stopped at the Apple Store so I could purchase an Apple Watch which I have since decided to take back - mostly because the salesman talked me out of the bigger screen which is what I really wanted. I can think of a thousand other things we need to spend money on - a bed for Easton, he needs new shoes, both boys need clothes and I need to add a pair of jeans and maybe a couple shirts for fall and winter. Not exciting anniversary gifts, but that's the mom life. :) Mike and I are not agreeing on taking the Apple Watch back though ;)

Kids hanging out at Grandpa and Grandma's

So all in all - a nice way to celebrate our anniversary :)