Birthday Weekend Tradition

Today is Jason's Birthday!! We celebrated together a couple of days ago with a surprise weekend, a gift that I promise to continue each year.

If, according to my rule, the second occurrence makes something a tradition and the third solidifies it - than surprising Jason with a weekend of activities has become a solid tradition for us. Since we started dating in 2012, I have tried to do something fun.

Here are the past weekends we have done for Jason's Birthday:

2012 - James Bond
Themed as a 007 mission docket, we went to see an all night marathon of James Bond movies at the TIFF Lightbox. The gift also included a one year membership to TIFF and other James Bond activities they were doing.

2013 - NYC
So probably the biggest weekend so far was a trip to New York City, complete with JetBlue flights, Daily Show tickets, and more. The surprise was accidentally uncovered in mid-November when Jason saw a text from Teri on my phone that referenced it. But we just started being excited for the trip together. Note: The trip was postponed until October of 2014 because of my father's death a few days before we were scheduled to leave.

2014 - Dog Sledding
With each activity mapped out in separate envelopes, I surprised Jason with a trip to Gatineau, Quebec, detailed in my Nov 29, 2014 post.

2015 - Caves and Buttertarts
Last year we went on a Buttertart Tour and stayed at a motel a couple of hours north-east of Toronto. We also made a visit to see Taylor and her family, as well as, climbed through some very tight caves. This is when I learnt that Jason had a bit of claustrophobia. While I had already known that he didn't like spiders, I unfortunately hadn't made the connection that caves would be a place that spiders might be. We enjoyed the experience anyway, caves should be a bit scary!

2016 - This Year!
I was able to do a bit better job with giving the weekend a theme and presented Jason with a geography challenge that had puzzles. The solutions detailed the activities. We stayed at the Royal York downtown, visited the Hockey Hall of Fame, watched the Leafs beat the Capitals at the ACC, and met up with friends for brunch.

I am already trying to figure out what to do for next November!