Fun In The NeighborhoodTravel

Why We Celebrate Blue Moons

Photo of a blue moon (c)hellasmultimedia.com A Blue Moon is the 2nd of two consecutive full moons falling in the same month. They are quite rare.

Three years in the 20th Century had two blue moons: 1915, 1961 and 1999 (the year we met). Ever since 1999, we’ve made it our own little “tradition” to celebrate Blue Moons.

The most recent Blue Moon was on July 31, 2004. The next one isn’t until May 31, 2007. And after that: December 31, 2009 …now THAT one should be fun!

Here’s a running list of how we have celebrated each Blue Moon together…

How Our Blue Moon Tradition Got Started

Since we started dating, we have spent each and every Blue Moon doing something romantic together…

The first one was March 31, 1999. To celebrate, we packed up the car and drove to Jekyll Island (near the Florida/Georgia border) and camped under the Moon.
Corny factoid: It was the first time we said “I love you” (…to each other).

The next Blue Moon occurred on December 30, 2001. We celebrated by dining at the Blue Moon Waterfront Grille — a romantic restaurant on the water at a Nashville Marina.
Useless trivia: This unique little restaurant closed its doors in 2004, a few years after it was almost destroyed when a tornado went through the area on May 10, 2003 — the same night that Jim looked to the skies as a funnel cloud hovered over our house and ended up tearing up the towns of Franklin and Leipers Fork.

Then, for the Blue Moon on July 31, 2004, we packed up the car and drove to Seven Points campground at Percy Priest Lake in Nashville.
How it went: While we had gone camping quite a bit together, I knew Jim didn’t remember this was a Blue Moon day, so he was in for a little surprise once we got there. I made the campground reservations and packed only things that were BLUE (blueberry muffins, blue gatorade, blue M&Ms, veggies & bleu cheese, even wore blue underwear… you get the idea!).

On May 31, 2007, we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to visit our recently purchased property in Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee.
The highlights: We picked out the biggest, most prominent tree in our forested 5+ acres of land. And we carved our names & the date of this special date in the tree. Yep, you might say we christened the site of our future dream home together!

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Photos from our Blue Moon trips

Next Blue Moon: December 31, 2009… stay tuned!