Ten years plus a lot more

Yesterday was our 10th anniversary. Hard to believe it was that long ago that we got married, and in other ways it seems like we have done and seen so much in that time. 9 of those anniversaries have been spent here in India.

It was also my birthday. I am a LOT older than 10, hence the ‘plus a lot more’ in the title.

This year we decided to get away for a night with just the two of us. My wife made me a great breakfast in bed that morning with chocolate chip pancakes, bacon, and a chocolate covered donut. The kids joined me in bed for that part. Anything involving chocolate and they are in.

Then we took the kids to school together and went off to the gym, where I got a massage while she worked out. She is much more motivated than me to work out every day. After our daughter got done with school we picked her up and brought her home and left shortly after that to check in to a local hotel.

We had arranged for some friends of ours to stay with the kids and take care of getting them to/from school, dressed, fed, to bed, etc. The kids normally do quite well with these situations, or at least that is what people tell us.

We left our cell phones turned off and had a backup phone on with only one person, one of the two looking after the kids, who had that number. No one else knew where we were or how to reach us.

We got to the hotel, checked in and promptly ordered room service for lunch. This is my wife’s favorite part of staying in a hotel. We ate like kings and then decided to read books for a while and eventually nodded off for a nearly 3 hour nap. Outstanding!!

We rested for a while more, got dressed and went downstairs to one of our favorite restaurants and had a great dinner of north indian kabobs and breads. It was as spectacular as it always is. This is one of our ‘special treat’ places that we love to go to, but can’t very often due to the cost so we enjoyed it to the fullest.

We again ate like kings and were totally stuffed by the end – when they brought us a complimentary cake (yes, a whole cake) for our anniversary. This was, in fact, the second cake we had gotten so far. We ate one bite each to be polite and asked to have the rest to bring to the room.

We rested the remainder of the night, trying to convince our full stomachs not to grumble too much. By about 10:30 or 11:00 we were off to sleep. Finally around 8:30 the next morning we conceded defeat and got up to have some breakfast – again room service as per my wife’s wishes.

We lounged around some more, read some more books and magazines, watched a little tv, and just took it easy. We eventually wandered down to the poolside and sat and read some more, my wife took a couple of quick dips in the pool and got some sun.

Finally we headed upstairs to get dressed for lunch and then checkout and go home. We had arranged for a late checkout at 2 pm instead of noon as they usually require. By 1:50 our bags were packed, and we headed off to pay the bill.

An incredible day of just being together, relaxing, resting, reading and eating till we were way beyond full. Glorious! What a great indulgent treat for both of us. We really must do this kind of thing more often. Somehow I doubt we would get bored with doing it simply because we could not afford to do it 'too often'. But boy was it a nice treat.