Couple Time

Shay and I had a baby free weekend last weekend. We let Mary Selwyn go to Prattville to stay with Goon and Grampaka for several different reasons. One, I was hosting my new bunco group and Shay wasn't going to be home in time to keep her and they were going to stay later than MSN's bed time and to avoid the disaster of trying to keep her locked up for hours I thought it would be best to allow her to visit grandparents......which by the way she adores, and I mean adores, all four of her grandparents and generally wants nothing to do with Shay or me when any of them are around so I can promise you it was just torture for her to be away from us (yeah right.)

Shay and I also thought this weekend would be a good opportunity for us to get some things around the house in order in preparation for munchkin #2's arrival. I will say we were extremely productive. We were able to get our closet and our guest bed room, or the nursery, completely cleaned out. I was proud of how much we got done.

Last but not least this weekend allowed Shay and I to enjoy some much needed "couple time." A few years ago I did a bible study called Apples of Gold. It is a wonderful bible study that I would recommend to anyone. The one thing that I really took away from this study was from the "Loving Your Husband," week. One of the general ideas from that week was that your marriage should be your first priority. Your husband should be number one, not your children (Obviously the list went God, husband, children). At first I think everyone, including myself, was blown away by this idea but it truly makes sense. In so many households the children are the number one priority and the relationship between the husband and wife is completely neglected. This is one reason so many marriages fall apart when the children leave the house. I remember someone specifically saying that your job is to raise children to leave. As heartbreaking as that is to me, it is true. in the end all that is left is two, you and your husband, and if you have failed to stay connected all those years I can't imagine you will find yourself happy.

The study also said that children crave loving and affectionate parents, another reason why it is so important to nurture your marriage. It is good for them to see you love each other and I'm sure it teaches them how to love too. This is an atmosphere I definitely want to create for my children. Plus I just want to stay connected to Shay because he is my partner and best friend and I only want to build that up not backtrack. That was just a generalization, I'm sure the lesson was much better than that but it really stuck with me and I try to keep my priorities in that order, but it is hard! I want so bad to be a great wife and a great mother and I strive to be both daily, however I'm pretty sure I'm a complete failure 90% of the time.

Back to the weekend, as much as we enjoy spending time just the three of us it was nice to have time when it was just the two of us. I know you are thinking, "cleaning out closets, some couple time," but we had the best time. We got to go through all of my scrapbooks and pictures and all the other junk that meant something to us at one time or another. It was like we were reliving our lives together so far going through every step of the last 10 years. We found cards and "love" notes from high school. We had a good time laughing at ourselves and how cheesy we were. I really enjoyed looking through all of my stuff from college and the wedding. Some even made me a little sad seeing old friends that aren't really a part of our lives anymore or just remembering certain times, I'm such a sap. We spent the whole day sifting through all our old stuff and reminiscing. I think it was the best day we have spent together in a long time and it reminded us why we "picked" each other to begin with. I couldn't think of a better activity. To me you don't get any more "couple time" than that. And don't worry we did manage to squeeze in two dinner dates, which was a real treat.

We did miss Mary Selwyn a ton and of course talked about her a ton and we were super excited to get her back, but we did take the time to enjoy each other's company, uninterrupted......oh and the nights of sleep weren't bad either. It was such a fun time and really refreshing for our marriage I think. I'm thankful we had the time to focus on us. We are planning on taking one more weekend to ourselves before our new addition, I'm really looking forward to it. We took that picture right before we went out to dinner. I can't tell you the last time we took a picture of just us.