Happy Anniversary to Us!
As my wife and I paddled across the lake on our paddle boards on our 12th Anniversary, our two girls perched on the nose of the boards…I had to chuckle. 12 years ago, as we exchanged our vows, I could not have imagined the amount of fun that we’d be having daily and the ways that our love would grow and mature. 12 years ago, we were fuzzy headed, van-owning dreamers with few goals beyond seeing the country and living on the West coast. You can look back at www.bencaywood.blogspot.com for some backstory of those years and the good times that we had out west, east, south and many points in between. Every now and then, I’ll look back at that fledgling attempt at a blog and chuckle about how good life has been. We’ve certainly not been wealthy financially, but we’ve been rich with time and love. In my field of education and consulting, I run into so many sad stories of broken families and I’m just so thankful for our happy family.
My wife and I met in college at Purdue in September of 2004 (the 29th to be exact)…I was skipping class and she was looking super-hot with a skateboard on the Quad. I still remember the first time I saw her. I walked up to her and said, “Hi, my name is Ben.” Take note fellas…I didn’t need any pick-up lines. We got married 18 months later and took off in a van for points unknown.
Anyway, the rest is history and back to SUP’ing…as I paddled across the lake with my family to one of our favorite spots. I just continued to grin. Evie had a water gun and was urging me to go faster so she could spray Alba. 12 years ago, I couldn’t have imagined that this is how we’d be spending our anniversary. Past anniversaries (before children) consisted of lengthy road trips down the California coast, trips to luxury hotels in Florida, and concerts in Oregon…Since having kids, we are pretty stoked to just share a quiet meal together at the bar of a decent restaurant. For the past five years, we always try to include the kids in activities. With that in mind, we paddled the SUP’s we bought for our 5th anniversary across the lake to our girls’ favorite shallow lake spot and the “jumping tree.”
After taking the girls for a nice paddle and swim, we dried off and went to an auction, followed up by some pizzas at our favorite spots. We left the kids with grandparents but made it home for baths and bedtime. Our anniversaries have mellowed out in the past years, but I have no doubt that the adventures will ramp up again!
Stay tuned for more adventures…Cheers!
Caywood Ventures and Consulting 