My husband turns thirty-six one week from today and I have absolutely NO idea what to get him. I’ve told him as much, multiple times, and he’s told me that he will give me some ideas, multiple times. We’re now a week away and if I need to order something online, it’s down to crunch time. I’d hate to be wandering the aisles of the local drug store the day before his birthday in the hopes that I could find something that would “do.”

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There are a number of things that are supposed to be the way to make your wife swoon. Flowers, chocolates, cleaning the house, cooking dinner (or taking her out for dinner), writing her notes, telling her nice things, and many others. Those are all fine and good, and they all make me feel loved (especially the nice words), but the one thing that is bound to make most women swoon is this:

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Once upon a time (seven years ago), my husband and I attended a marriage course once a week for six weeks. One of the weeks covered love languages and it was a great learning experience. People are wired with different “love languages”, which affects how they feel loved and how they show love. If your love language is, say, “gifts”, receiving presents makes you feel loved and you will tend to show love to others by giving them presents.

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As we all know, February 14th is fast approaching. Valentine’s Day (or Love Day, as I refer to it)(Old school The Simpsons reference, there) means that we have to buy enough Valentine’s Day cards for three different kids’ classrooms. My kids are all talking about a Valentine’s Day dance at school (I DON’T KNOW EITHER) and each of their teachers are running with the them for the entire month of February.

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My husband and I share a bed — and a bedroom, obviously — but I’ve heard stories of couples who have their own rooms. Their own rooms! All to themselves! I suppose my husband and I do have our own rooms, in a sense. I have a craft room and he has his spousal avoidance center workshop, but when it comes time to go to sleep, we go to the same room and the same bed.

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Our church is holding a marriage “course” over four consecutive Wednesdays that is about making sure that you make time to connect with your spouse. I went begrudgingly (I find it ironic that we’re so BUSY, yet they expect us to come for two hours per session), but it was a good evening. We watched some video clips, answered questionnaires, then compared the answers. Not surprisingly (to us), our responses were almost identical.

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Yesterday morning my husband and I got our kids fed, dressed, and ready for school. They walked down to the road to catch the school bus and we loaded our ski gear into the truck and we headed to the local hill, just the two of us. We left the lake fog behind and spent the day under blue skies, basking in the sun. Getting our gear on was a breeze because we didn’t have to help three smaller people get their gear on (Or hear cries that ‘It doesn’t FEEL RIGHT) and getting our gear back off was just as easy.

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It’s my birthday this coming Sunday (I’m turning thirty-something), and I make a pretty big deal about it. Tonight is a potluck girls’ night in at my house, which is always a lot of fun. Good food, great friends, and a lot of laughter. The kids have started working on cards and pictures for me and my eldest has offered to make me breakfast in bed on Sunday morning. My husband and I are going out for a nice dinner on Sunday night, without our kids, which is a great way to celebrate my birthday, and also a much-needed date night. We haven’t had one since long before Christmas, and we both can’t wait.

How do you celebrate your birthday?

My husband and I both have a case of the Januarys, coupled with fighting a cold (him) and battling PMS (me). We’re open about it and while it would be easy to just grumble and groan, we’ve made a plan to get us out of our funk.

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I don’t talk about sex, much, in this column, other than to say that my husband and I have it. Regularly. We have three kids, I have been pregnant four times (I miscarried my first baby), so I think it’s pretty safe to assume that all of the babies came to be because of us having sex.

(I’m pretty sure that my children will choose to believe that my husband and I have only had sex four times, despite the innuendos that their Dad likes to throw out to make me laugh and them cringe.)

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