A Mini-Break

Every parent of young children knows how hard it can be to get away for the night alone with just their spouse. It seems inevitable that someone will get sick, have an emergency at work, or the babysitter falls through.

Danny and I have the exact same problem. We have four young children who are always fighting off some virus or attempting to shake off an ear infection. This fall and winter have been tough. The twins were both hospitalized on two different occasions for pneumonia. J.D. had ear tube surgery in February, and has since had two more ear infections. This last month, our entire family fought off pink eye which hopped from person to person over the course of three weeks. And along with the adorable craft projects the girls bring from school, they also arrive home with coughs, runny noses, and fevers which they easily pass on to their little brother and sister.

Sometimes it's not illness that keeps us away, it's just the busy nature of our lives. Four little kids get invited to a whole lot of birthday parties!

Danny probably suffers the most from this situation. Crops don't stop growing on the weekends, and water runs 24/7 on the ranches he manages. I can regularly get away to San Diego, Palm Desert or Julian with the help of my family and feel the relief of seeing new sights and having new experiences. But he goes to work day in and day out to provide for our family, and rarely complains.

We have always made it a priority to get out of town for the night on our anniversary, which was in early March. This last March, due to illness, we had to cancel our plans with the idea that we would postpone our mini-break for a later time. Well that time came about this weekend. The grandparents and our faithful babysitter swooped in to take care of the kiddos, while we exited the scene before anyone could catch a cold.

We drove out of town into the mountains and felt the cool air relax our spirits as minute by minute we approached that old feeling called freedom.

Scenes like this welcomed us. It felt like I could breathe again.

And I got to spend 30 hours of uninterrupted time with this guy, which is all I really wanted anyway.

Breathe.



And then a few hours into our mini-break, I saw a little girl toddling along the sidewalk that looked like this:

And I immediately felt a pang of longing for my chubby little baby G.

Then we drove through some more picturesque scenes with gorgeous wildflowers and mountain views. I couldn't help but think about....

...my oldest daughter, Huggy.

She would have loved nothing more than to run through that open meadow of wildflowers while singing a romantic song.

Later that night, Danny and I watched a sentimental movie. The couple in the movie had a sweet little daughter who in one scene curled up next to her mom like a little snail, which made me miss the supreme curl up skills of....

...Cubby.

But then again, I see her in every red-headed kid, every thumb-sucker, every little girl with a nappy pink blanket. So, she's on my mind a lot. Maybe that's also because the kid is attached to me at the hip. Anyway.

The following day, Danny and I drove out to a resort way up in the mountains, just to see if it was somewhere we'd like to take the kids in the future. I saw my only son everywhere at this place.

I saw him playing in the streams, running in the grass, making the "hee hee hee" sound for the horses in the pasture, and of course, hanging out with his dad in the beautiful setting.

From where does this parent guilt originate? I am with those kids, serving them, playing with them, dressing them, feeding them, you name it, all day long for weeks and months on end. I took one trip away in a year (since our last anniversary trip last year), and the guilt and longing took my breath away at first.

But then I looked over at my husband, and realized the mini-break was for me, for him, and for the kids.

The kids need to see that Danny and I treasure time together and have fun vacations even without them.

Danny needs the break to remind himself that there is life beyond the ranch, and to experience the pleasure of zero stress.

I need the break to remind myself to appreciate what is really important: God, Danny, my beautiful children, and my amazing family. In that order. So....when's the next mini-break?