Melissa’s birthday is a special day to her.

We realized this year that she likes to feel spoiled and appreciated on her birthday.

It’s also a special day because she shares the day with her 2 brothers. All 3 of them were born on June 24 just 3 years apart!

How crazy is that!

I asked Melissa what she wanted for her 29th birthday and she said 2 things – an iPad and photos.

We skipped the iPad this year and went with the photos.

The photos to her are special because they document the feelings she has at this point in her life – love, appreciation, and admiration for life and the beauty of this state we get to call home.

We found a field during winter that we’ve gone on walks in a few times and knew it was the perfect place to capture the mems.

It has a little rope swing tied to the tree and just ahh – all the feels.

I’m a procrastinator.

The morning of Melissa’s birthday I woke up early to go get flowers and a card.

The stores were still closed so I landed at Dunkin and found 1 grocery store open.

That’ll do.

When I got home Melissa was just waking up for our morning walk.

She opened her card – cried and laughed – so it was a success!

We took a walk around the neighborhood and just took in the beauty of the summer morning in Tennessee.

We just love how quiet it is being surrounded by trees and how peaceful it feels.

We got home and prepared for a workday – ugh adulting.

I also realized this year that we gotta do something special for our birthdays on the day of birth, not the weekend before or after.

It just doesn’t feel as special.

We did Soundwaves at Gaylord Opryland the weekend before to celebrate, but it came to day of and I just felt bad if we did nothing.

I knew I had wanted to take Melissa to get oysters and did some research to find some good happy hours.

So we called it a day early and made our way to downtown Franklin to have happy hour oysters at 55 south.

After filling our bellies with oysters, we needed a good libation to top it off.

We went to one of our favorite, O Be Joyful, which is right down the street in downtown Franklin.

Now we’re nice and loose for me to whoop Melissa’s butt in mini golf.

I’m not nice – I didn’t let her win on her birthday.

While we were golfing we ran into some of our friends and ended up playing a round with them too.

It was so fun to run into them and made the birthday even more special for Melissa.

We got home and did our annual family facetime call to sing to Melissa and her brothers.

The next morning, we went to Tupelo Honey, another one of our favorites!

Its special to us too because that was where we went when we decided to sign our first lease in Tennessee.

After that, we took a trip to the farmers market at The Factory in Franklin.

It was HOT!!

We didn’t make it very long there.

When we got home we decided to go to Home Depot and get some flowers to add to our garden.

Gardening is our new hobby. So peaceful!

And a nice way to detach from the online reality we now live in.

It was so nice hearing Melissa say she had a perfect birthday weekend.

Cheers to the last year of her 20’s!