We're Celebrating #25

Yes, today is a special day and once again we're celebrating and on a getaway, once again.

It's not our wedding anniversary as that's not until August when the number will be 22 years.

Today, we celebrate the quarter century since our first date on May 16, 1997 in our home state of NJ. This date has been noted in posts dating back to 2010, the year we started blogging. (Last year's post had a few the way we were photos, so none here.) As often told, we met online through an obsolete dating site, that was nothing like those now. We emailed for months—no photos or calls and only spoke by phone the night before our first meet-up, no phone texting back then then. 

We compare our getting to know you process like those exchanges shown between the couple Kathleen (Meg Ryan) and Joe (Tom Hanks) in the 1998 film,You've Got Mail. The difference is that our meet-up was a year before the film's release. 

Our emails included exchanging this ecard back and forth. It would show up in one of our morning mails and be returned to the other by evening. The inside of the card included the line, I’m sending them back to you…and so we did, quite often.

We celebrate the date by spending it someplace different each year and usually dining out for lunch or dinner, sometimes both.  Special occasions only happen once a year, after all. In past years, we've planned getaways around the date in different locations as much as possible. The past couple of years, our travel was restricted because of we all know what and we stayed within New England.

It's quite often, the little things in life, like a date that only you or someone else remembers. These are what make remembering celebrations that we enjoy, so special, especially as we're the only ones who do.

And, this year, our celebration getaway is in Atlantic Beach, NC, where Grenville is so happy overjoyed to feel the sand between his toes. He grew up spending summers at the NJ shore. While I'm not really a sun and sand fan, I always appreciate the beauty of sand and surf.

A bonus this year was that we had a front and center viewing for last night's total lunar eclipse from the small balcony of our oceanfront hotel room. This happened since the sunlight shining directly onto Earth passed through the atmosphere and was projected onto the moon, producing a red tone during the eclipse and it's why a lunar eclipse is referred to as a blood moon.

Unfortunately, my digital travel camera has a very limited zoom (4X) and handholding the cell phone didn't produce any noteworthy images. However unsuccessfully, I tried as shown above. 

However, Grenville had somewhat better results with his small and longer zoom digital camera as shown above. Just being able to see this sight was a special treat and we watched it unfold from roughly 10:30 until midnight. Ironically, If we had been home in Nashua, NH, we would have missed it entirely. Neighbors told us that clouds and rain obstructed any viewings. That makes this anniversary getaway even more memorable since we were in a great place to see it firsthand. After all it's really all about location, location, location, isn't it?

About two lunar eclipses occur each year, and the next total lunar eclipse will occur in November 2022. Most likely, we will be in NH and hopefully the weather will cooperate.

How about you — any special dates, anniversary or otherwise, that you celebrate annually?