a little break

Our deck is almost done now and it is so nice to see so much getting done in a short time my parents have been here.  Ehren's parents have been calling them to the cabin and this weekend was a good time to go so my parents took our kids to see Bemidji and then to the cabin to spend some time at the lake. And to give us a little break from the kids. 

I always forget how nice it is to be home without our kids.  It takes Ehren and I a while to figure out what we should do with all our time all of a sudden :) but it is such a nice little break.  I hope all the grandparents know how much it means to their kids when they do that for them.  It refreshes us, keeps us closer as a couple and the grandparents are able to build long lasting memories with their grandkids.

Little breaks like this are so important for so many reasons.  You realize how much your kids impact your life, how sometimes it's hard to think what to do on our own for fun because all our fun things involve our kids :).  It's almost a little glimpse into our empty nest down the road.  It made me think of how different life will be then.  I love spending time with our kids now, taking them places, having new experiences with them, watching them grow.  It brings so much joy to us and I hope we don't ever take it for granted.  But at the same time we can't forget about each other, finding things we can do alone.  Usually when we find someone to watch our kids we have our date all planned out and it goes by so quickly.  But this time we decided about it at the last minute so we just stayed home with no plans and in a way it was a nice change because we are always on the go, trying to do so much stuff that we don't get to do when we have kids with, that sometimes we forget to be still and just recharge together.

Today I have 4 kids coming to day care and it is strange that my own kids are not here.  This is what it's like when people keep doing daycare after their own kids are in school already.  It is very strange to me and it tells me I'm doing the right thing trying out something new in the Fall.  As the summer is trucking along, I'm getting more nervous about subing, but at the same time I'm so excited to have our house back. :)  No more baby/toddler stuff around, no high chairs, sippy cups, play pens and so on.   And most importantly, I'm looking forward to calmer evenings when I get to spend time with just our kids after school.  Doing daycare, the time from 3:30-5:30pm would be the most stressful for me as I was trying to make a quick dinner for us, keeping an eye on our kids doing homework and watching all the other kids on top of that.  So it will be very different having a quiet home in the afternoon, just us.  I know our kids will miss their little friends, they already tell me that so I'm glad that our nieces Emily and Aveah live less than a mile away and we'll be able to have them over a lot.