My wife and I have been married now for over 25 years. Yup, same girl stuck with this same guy. But I really do love her more than ever and she seems to tolerate me. All that said, it can be that from time to time we might take each other for granted. Not intending to let that happen we try various ways of keeping the spark alive. The game 52 Weeks of Romance sounded like a good fit for that role.

When I first opened the box, I took out the silk bag that comes with it, tore each of the scratch off cards apart. I then shuffled them and placed them in the bag. Giving the bag a quick toss about to even shuffle them some more - I opened it to let my wife select the first card for the first week. She was kind of excited. She took one, began to scratch and then when she read it she said “this is dumb.” I knew we were in for trouble. Let me explain.

Her card read something like "go out under the stars and enjoy time together". Folks, it was December and we live in Michigan. In Michigan in December the temp outside is normally around 30 or below. Yup, that was not happening. The alternative said to sit next to the fireplace inside in a single sleeping bag and look out the window at the stars. Problems number two and three. We do not have a sleeping bag nor do we have a fireplace. I said lets just use a blanket and set by the heating register. We both laughed and thought this was going to be a failure.

Being hardheaded as I am (OK get your mind out of the gutter for a minute... other head,) I decided to try another one. It said to leave three love notes around for my wife to find. I did and she thought that was kind of neat. Her next one that she scratched off must have said write your initials on the mirror when I shower. What a surprise to see her initials on the mirror in the steam when I got out of the shower. And yes, I even washed the mirror off for her after she did that.

We are now taking the cards we can not use and placing them in the box that the game came in. We plan on using them later in the year by just drawing them out of the box and using them over.

Who knows...we may even find ourselves out under the stars in the summer …..