Lovefest 2010

I am sure that all my dedicated followers (hey, Mark!) have been eagerly awaiting a Happy Here update. Well, the past five weeks or so have been a little less than happy here, due to the relentless string of colds and ear infections in our house, with the accompanying pain, guilt, helplessness, discouragement and exhaustion. Does that sound a little dramatic? Well, then you’ve never been a working mom with a toddler who has bum ears. But that’s a whole other ball of wax.

Thankfully, we are emerging from the muck and into the best month of the year. May = Lovefest in our house, which is a month-long celebration of love and Bowdens. On May 8, we celebrate the birth of yours truly, followed by the newly-instituted celebration of me being a mommy, and then later in the month we celebrate our wedding anniversary, and Aaron’s birthday is the cherry on top!

May means flowers, jewelry, fancy dinners, hand-written love letters, days at the spa, weekend vacations, and lot of cake.  And that’s just for me. Aaron is actually a tremendous gift-giver. This surprised me, because Aaron isn’t really into “stuff.” But, man-oh-man does he spoil me. Last year, when Lovefest encompassed my 30th birthday, first mother’s day, and our 5th wedding anniversary, well, let’s just say I really made out.

This is really sweet, but there is a downside, because I’m usually left scrambling to come up with a good plan to celebrate Aaron, when I thought we were just going to be “low key this year.” This is further compounded by Aaron always returning everything I ever buy him. Once, we were shopping and Aaron pointed to a mannequin and said, “I would look awesome in that.” Yes, he said that. So I bought what the mannequin was wearing. Aaron returned it. Another time, Aaron wanted a corduroy blazer. I bought one (for Christmas, not Lovefest), and it looked great on him. Yet he wasn’t convinced there wasn’t something better out there. So we trudged through every men’s store in Santa Monica. I was ready to sign divorce papers by the end of the day. Guess what we ended up buying? The same damn blazer I had put under the tree. About three years ago, Aaron decided he wanted a new Eagles tee shirt. Well, his dad bought him a couple, which he wears, but they weren’t “the one.” So he’s been shopping, and shopping, and shopping. Finally, three weeks ago, he found his Eagles shirt. (I have to admit, it is pretty sweet.) Maybe there is some deeply-rooted hunting instinct thing going on?  Just shoot a damn deer and get it over with.

Anyway, this year we are kicking off the celebration with a mini-vacay. One of the best things about California is the wide variety of accessible weekend destinations that make you feel like you’ve had a real vacation (which I swear, we’ll never have). San Francisco is an hour plane ride, then there’s San Diego, Vegas, a number of national parks, wine country, Tahoe, Santa Barbara, Catalina, et cetera. We have settled on Disneyland, with a two-night stay at a hip boutique hotel in Anaheim (get me out of my sick house!). Planning the vacation is almost as much fun for me as the actual vacation, so I’ve got lists out the wazoo. What a treat! Stay tuned next week-ish for an update, with lots of cute Clara pics at “Mickey Mouse’s House.”

Cheers to Lovefest!