How We Celebrated Our 5th Year Anniversary for $75

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It’s official. Mr. FAF and I have celebrated our 5th year anniversary this year.

Our budget was $100, and we spent $75 in total (including tip) at a seafood restaurant called Hot N Juicy in Falls Church, Virginia.

It sounds simple and happy enough.

But in fact, that day was quite a bit of an adventure for both Mr. FAF and me.

Related: Our 4th Year Anniversary & Our Biggest Fight

Excitement

Mr. FAF and I celebrate only two important occasions in a year: the Chinese New Year and our anniversary.

In the months leading to our 5th anniversary, Mr. FAF and I kept talking about how we would celebrate it. We made it a tradition to go to a steak house on this important occasion. But this year, we wanted to change things up by going to a crawfish restaurant called Hot N Juicy.

I had been telling Mr. FAF about this place for months and wanted to check it out. However, since it’s a bit far from our house, and the price is not exactly low either, we kept putting it off. They have two combo options. Get Your Feet Wet is $39, and The Drool is $56.

Sleep deprivation

With a second baby in the picture, my sleep schedule has been a bit unpredictable. That particular week, I had really bad sleep. I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling engorged and having to pump.

And after I slept for 30 minutes to an hour or so, Baby F2 woke up wanting to nurse. Then I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I stayed up from 2 to 5 AM for days that week. I was getting exhausted and looked forward to the weekend to make up for the sleep deprivation.

On the day of our anniversary, I was sleeping soundly in our room after a rough night. Mr. FAF walked into the room, making loud noise and said he would take our daughter to another room so that I could sleep more.

But it doesn’t work like that. I went to bed at 11 PM and was up 2-5 AM that day after a week of sleep deprivation. Once Mr. FAF woke me up at 7:30 AM, I got up to pump and just couldn’t fall back to sleep.

I was so angry at him that I lashed out on him the moment I saw him downstairs. I had told him multiple times before not to walk into my room when I was sleeping, but he still did.

I wanted to get more sleep that day so that I would feel better and could have a great time with him at lunch. But he interrupted my sleep and left me exhausted.

I was grumpy that whole morning and didn’t want to talk to him. In my mind, I knew I could choose to forget about that incident and be happy or keep feeling mad at him. I wanted to be happy, but I was so tired I couldn’t stop feeling angry at Mr. FAF.

The celebration

My father-in-law (FIL) agreed to babysit Baby F2 so that Mr. FAF and I could go to lunch together. We took Baby F1 with us since we didn’t want my FIL to feel too tired with two kids at home. When we got into the car, this is how our conversation went:

Mr. FAF: How did you sleep?

Me: I had 5 hours of interrupted sleep.

Mr. FAF: Tell me a joke.

Me: I’m tired. Not in the mood.

We barely talked to each other in the car. I felt so dizzy and sleepy I didn’t even feel like eating anything. I just went along since we had agreed to go to a restaurant that day.

When we got to Hot N Juicy, we couldn’t find any parking. Mr. FAF suggested going to another restaurant, but I didn’t want to eat and suggested we go grocery shopping and go home.

Mr. FAF told me to wait in the car while he went to get groceries with Baby F1. While in the car, I miraculously fell asleep for 15 minutes or so. When I woke up, I felt so much better. My mood was instantly lifted.

I think Mr. FAF could tell I wasn’t as tired as before and suggested we to back to the restaurant. I readily agreed. Thanks to that short nap, I felt like I big cloud over my head was lifted. I felt like a totally different person. I was back to my normal self and kept talking to Mr. FAF.

I set two rules for our lunch that day:

1. No cell phone except for when taking photos of the food and us

2. No politics

We stuck to the rules and had a great time reviewing what we did in 2018 and what we wanted to do in the future. Our son didn’t throw any tantrums in the restaurant, so it was a big success for us.

We got The Drool combo for $56. We also got French fries and a coke. The total including tip was $75.

Seafood & Mr. FAF

French fries and calamari. The calamari was part of the combo. 

After lunch, we went for a walk at the mall. We didn’t buy anything there.

Christmas is coming to town!

Conclusion

Looking back on that experience, I feel bad for behaving like a nightmare that day. Later on, I was really impressed with Mr. FAF’s patience.

If he had reacted negatively to my grumpy mood in any way, I would have exploded, and things could have gone downhill from there. But he didn’t. He kept apologizing and tried to be as gentle as he could.

It’s a great reminder to me that Mr. FAF is a good husband, and that I need to better control my temper and my mood.

To be fair, Mr. FAF wasn’t the only one doing all the toleration either. A couple of days before our anniversary, we had a fight about Mr. FAF’s increasingly excessive drinking. We ended the fight with Mr. FAF agreeing to drink only once a week.

Those fights and disagreements show me that in order to maintain a happy and stable marriage, both of us need to compromise with each other and listen when the other is not happy and find ways to improve ourselves and the situation.

I am writing this post to keep a record of how my marriage with Mr. FAF has changed over the years. If I don’t write about it in a post, I probably won’t remember much in the future.

Related:

8 Things Hubby & I Have Fought About: Money, Intimacy, Careers, etc.

Life With 2 Kids & Living With The FIL: An Update From Our Family

Is It A Mistake To Get Married?

Money & The Self-imposed Resentment

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