What Santa Brought Us

The best present Santa brought us was little Taj!  Even Nikhil loves this present.  (And, I did make these little tie shirts).

But, now on to material things.  In our family, we only buy presents for the kids (nieces, nephews, etc), which is a great tradition since they're the most important part of Christmas.  But Santa did bring me a little something I needed.  The backstory is that when I run, I always take Jeff's watch.  My watch (which he bought me for our first anniversary) is a dress watch and I don't want to run with that, so I take his surf watch.  He hates that I do that because I get sunscreen and sweat all over it and then sometimes I misplace it.  So, for Christmas, Santa bought me...

a Roxy surfwatch which I love.  I've started swimming at the Outrigger, which for some reason impresses my former swimmer/water polo husband.  The first time he saw me swim, he commented that  he was surprised, I think he thought I would be flailing around, since we always joke that I'm the land athlete and he's the water athlete.  Little did he know that I swam on the Springdale summer swim team until I was 10 years old - that's right, everyone should be impressed.  

For Jeff's present, I wanted to get him something meaningful.  It's a running joke that our only dates are to Hawaii Ophthalmology Society meetings.  We both have to attend, so we get a babysitter and the restaurants are nice, the meals are free and those have been our dates.  I am exaggerating only slightly, we do usually go out to dinner for our birthdays as well.  But, it occurred to me that discussing the latest Medicare cuts does not constitute a date.  And, some of you may be thinking, you two see each other all the time - at work, at home.  This is true, but not true.  We do obviously work together, but we each have our own patient load and we only see each other at lunch time, as we eat at our desk in front of our computer, so our main conversations revolve around payroll, administrative issues, bills.  And, at home, as parents, we are just trying to survive - get Nikhil his dinner, bathe him, get him to bed, which for some reason has now turned into a 2 hour affair.  So, it really leaves little time for real conversation.

I was browsing the blogosphere (why reinvent the wheel?) for husband gift ideas, when I came across this blog, find joy in the journey, with the best idea. It was perfect - 12 pre-planned dates, one each month, for the whole year.  Jeff and I always say we are going to do things and then the day comes around for our "date" and somehow, a trip to Costco ends up getting substituted.  But, no more.  I gave him a box with 12 envelopes.  On the inside cover of the box, I included a schedule of the dates after going through our work calendar and finding the Saturdays that we aren't working.  

I also gave him little hints and he's already trying to figure out each date.

January is the most extravagant, mainly because it's our anniversary and after having Taj, we have had very little time alone.  Each envelope has a printed card with the itinerary and other information.

Some dates are free, I don't want to give them away, in case Jeff's reading, but they are all things we have talked about doing over the past 3.5 years living here in Hawaii.  I'll post pics of the envelope and date as we do them in case other Hawaii couples are looking for fun things to do here!