Rained Out

The baby was up just before 6am this morning to nurse.  As I laid her back in her crib shortly before 6:30 I thought briefly about crawling back into the warm cocoon of my bed, pulling the covers up over my head and trying to ignore the sun  infiltrating the bedroom.  Instead I resigned myself to shutting the alarm off and enveloping myself with steam from the shower.

An hour later I was dressed and ready for the day (including hair AND makeup), C was gone for work and both kids were still sound asleep.  I grabbed my cup of coffee and headed to the back door to enjoy the peace of the backyard for a few minutes.  As I raised my hand to push the door open I heard the unmistakable sound of soft raindrops on the patio.

I can hope that it's just a mere coincidence and not an indication of the day to come.

Long Overdue

For the first time ever, we actually went on an honest-to-goodness family vacation.  Someplace that didn't include tents, camp trailers, hunting, fishing, or days without running water.  Something other than 3-day weekends into the wilderness or cross-country treks to visit family (not that visiting family isn't good, I'm not saying that).  Someplace that we'd never imagine ourselves vacationing.

It took a tremendous amount of convincing, but C finally agreed to spend part of a week with his family in the Outer Banks.  We all hung out together in a a fabulously huge, and just fabulous in general, beach house with ocean access.  A beach house.  And we absolutely loved it.

KT spent the days running like a wild child after her cousins, doing cannonballs into the pool, collecting shells on the beach, splashing in the surf and catching sand crabs after dark.  She was up early with the sun, crashing for a 2-3 hour nap in the bliss of air conditioning in the afternoon and then back at it full force until well after the sun went down.  If you'd ask her I'm sure she'd say it was the best week of her life.

Baby Girl (which reminds me that I have yet to nickname her here on the blog) spent the days playing on the floor with her cousin and enjoying being passed from person to person to person.  To person. And then back to me when she was hungry.  After a couple of attempts she finally warmed to the idea of the pool and splashed in the water for an hour or so.  On one single afternoon.  The next day we tried the ocean and it was a disaster.  Upon trying the pool again we were met with the same blood curdling screams.  So she continued to enjoy spending quality time on the laps and in the arms of family.

C and I enjoyed not only the time way, but each other.  For the first time in longer than I can remember we both relaxed.  There was no stress of jobs, no worrying over housework, laundry or other domestic responsibilities.  There were no laptops to snag our attention for hours at a time, no sitting on the couch watching television for hours.  We hung out in the pool together while the girls napped in the afternoon, walked on the beach hand in hand after they were asleep for the night.  For the first time in longer than I can remember, we didn't get into petty arguments about anything.  We had real conversations after everyone else in the house had gone to sleep, we laughed while attempting to play pool when it was too rainy to be outside.  It reminded me of why I fell in love with him 12 years ago and reminded me how much I still love him.

It reminded both of us how important our family is and how vacation is about so much more than visiting places and people.  It reminded both of us how important our marriage is and how we need to give ourselves that uninterrupted time more often.

Hopefully we find ourselves packing for vacation sooner than another 12 years from now.