Hubby and I just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary this year, aka the tin/aluminum anniversary. While I never once doubted that we would make it this far, I had no idea it would be this fun! Hubby and I didn’t take the most common and well-traveled path by deciding to be DILDOs (dual-income, little dog owners) instead of parents, but I’m so glad that we took the path we did because I think it’s a huge reason we’ve shared so many incredible adventures in the past ten years and grown closer together, rather than further apart, as couples often do over time.

Every year around our wedding anniversary, Pie and I have made it a tradition to go back to Breckenridge where we got married to take a photo in the same field where we took our wedding photos. It’s so cool to now have an entire deck of 10 photos to memorialize our marriage.

In addition to our Breckenridge photo tradition, we have another annual tradition that has undoubtedly been influential in keeping our marriage strong over the past decade. A few years ago, hubby and I decided to spoil ourselves with a vacay to Kauai to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Ever since, we’ve made it a tradition to treat ourselves to a nice vacay for our wedding anniversary. We are so grateful to have the privilege of taking a big vacation each year to allow us to take a break from our busy lives and focus on each other. While our vacays are rarely the laid-back kind, we enjoy the opportunity to do grand, outdoor adventures together, a hobby I’m thrilled we both share. In the past few years, we’ve visited other Hawaiian islands, circled all of Iceland, breezed through Paris and Copenhagen after touring the magical Faroe Islands, roadtripped all the way to the Oregon Coast with an entire sausage squad in tow, and even explored some beautiful spots in our own backyard.

We seem to have a tendency of mostly visiting islands, which means our pups cannot tag along for our anniversary vacations, but when we began planning our 2020 vacay, we wanted to find a destination where we could take our senior pups along for and also one that would still have the beautiful nature scenery and outdoorsy activities that are a requirement for our anniversary vacays. A roadtrip to Banff, Canada, seemed like the perfect vacay to meet that criteria! Unfortunately, the pandemic put a little wrench in those plans; but fortunately, we hadn’t actually booked anything when the pandemic hit.

In the time since we put that trip on pause, we’ve developed even more of an attachment to our two newest weens. We have also yet to find a trustworthy petsitter to leave the pups with for vacations after saying goodbye to our beloved petsitter-friends that sadly moved back to their hometown during the pandemic. We definitely couldn’t imagine taking a trip without the teeny weens, but we also couldn’t imagine not taking a trip this year, especially with it being our 10th anniversary, so it made perfect sense to revive the Banff idea. While it was bittersweet that we wouldn’t be taking the senior weens on our roadtrip to Banff like we had originally planned, the pandemic was responsible for us being able to spend much more time with the senior weens and create so many memories with them that we would never have been able to have otherwise; so we looked forward to a special anniversary creating new memories and adventures with the new teeny weens.

Banff turned out to not only be the perfect destination to celebrate our love of the outdoors, but also a dog mom’s dream vacay. We were able to take the teeny weens EVERYWHERE! Stay tuned for a recap of our special 10th anniversary vacation to Banff, Canada.