40 Days and 40 Nights

That is how much time the hubs got for our pcs move and leave! And what's even better is that he still has a few weeks left before going back to work!

In our three years of marriage we have spent more than half of that apart. He deployed for 9 months a month after we were married and I finally moved to NC a week before our year anniversary. Although he was home for a year after that our work schedules never matched up and since I was also in school things were quite crazy in our household. Except for our honeymoon taken right after he got back from that long deployment we haven't taken a trip just for ourselves

In the past, when the hubs received leave we have taken it to go home to visit our families and friends in Wisconsin. We have been home the last two christmases and then this past August for my cousin's wedding. While we love visiting our families and friends I'm sick of the drama that's associated with it. It never fails, someone always gets upset because we didn't spend enough time with them. In a one week period we have both sides of our families to visit with. No joke we usually are doing something with someone for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. By the time we leave to head back home we are exhausted, usually arguing or having argued over some drama that occurred and more than ready to go back. This past Christmas we decided to try something different. We told everyone exactly when we would be in town and to call us and set up a definite plan, whether it was dinner or lunch or going to a movie. That way whoever wanted to get together we saw and we weren't running around like chicken's with our heads cut off. Apparently this offended people since our families felt like they shouldn't have to make plans with us and wouldn't you know it, M broke his finger on this trip and got really sick the last few days in town, unable to move from my parent's couch for two days straight which forced us to cancel plans with some family member's. I never realized some people were upset until later when it was mentioned by other family member's. We can never win

This time we both realized that something needed to change. Right when we got back from our X-mas leave M deployed. I was upset and felt like we had no time together. At the end of November we found out we were expecting and instead of being able to celebrate and enjoy it we instead focused our time and energy on making everyone else happy. Of course that didn't happen which led us to get irritated with another instead of celebrating something very exciting. Something that he would be missing out on for the next few months.

I know this may sound unfair. We love our families and have loved being able to go home to visit. But when you spend half of your marriage apart, and go months without seeing each other, I don't think it's unreasonable that we start putting our marriage first. Especially when his leave falls after a deployment. Not only have we not seen each other in month's, but now we have to share each other with everyone else. After awhile that just becomes difficult. With the addition of little G coming soon we have decided that we won't be doing that anymore. We need time to start and work on our own little family, instead of constantly worrying about making everyone happy. And now that we live in Florida I think it's the perfect excuse for us to stay home and everyone else to come visit!

I'm sure some of you are wandering what led to this blog post? Well when the hubs was given his 40 days leave we jokingly said it would probably take a week before we were sick of each other. Since we moved I am now unemployed and he's off, meaning we have plenty of time together. Im not ashamed to admit that we were both nervous of having all this time together. Both of us are used to being independent and handling everything on our own, with him being gone so much and me holding up the homefront. Don't get me wrong, we were excited to have this time together but it just seemed surreal. 40 days with just us. No family member's or friends vying for our time. No one getting upset because we didn't spend enough time with them and 40 days of us doing whatever the heck we wanted! And I'll tell you what..

It has been pure bliss! We have spent our time working on the house, going to the beach, watching movie's at night, eating dinner together every night. We do all our grocery shopping and shopping for the house together and he even has helped clean a lot! Besides the minor married couple argument's over who left their drink cup sitting on the coffee table we haven't even gotten sick of each other.And we are fully aware that this time is precious. Soon he will be back to work and then our little one will be here. These will be our last few weeks as a twosome. Time that we will never get back again. So for these next few weeks we plan to continue enjoy our time together! There is a pirate festival this weekend we are going to. Our maternity pictures are next week tuesday and we also start our birthing classes. So much to do, I know this time will fly by. I'm going to be quite sad when he goes back to work. This has been some much needed time together for the both of us!

And to our family and friends back home you are more than welcome to visit anytime.