What Every Married-With-Children Needs

Excuse the shoe!

I will never forget the time my grandfather told me that I needed to get a babysitter. That my husband and I needed time without kids.

Yep. 

He was very progressive. ;) I was a young mother, probably overly attached to my little tots and

running a bit ragged. When the boys were young, they clung to me and would meltdown in anyone else's arms. Looking back, it was no biggie. Actually, it is kind of nice to know that there was one point in their lives where I was numero uno. But at the time, my grandfather wasn't thinking about the motherhood of it all, he was actually speaking about the marriage of it all.

And, although I savor the moments with my children, I have to agree with him. Leaving the kids in someone else's care is a very good thing--especially for marriage.

It's been three years since we last went on a grown up trip. The last trip we took sans children was on the brink of the worst year of our lives. And as we walked through the valley, and seriously wondered if our marriage would survive, I had absolutely no desire to spend more than a couple hours alone with the man, let alone a week vacation.

But, 2015 had been a very good year for us. Still hard, still rocky, but a time of rebuilding our marriage in a new light, with different expectations. We've become friends again, something I thought could never be. And because of this, and the fact that we had bid on a trip to support the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation which was about to expire, we decided it was time to get away.

I had forgotten how important a getaway is in our marriage. It's a time where we must depend on each other for everything because we are in a unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people, and nothing but time on our hands. It seems that we step into a time warp of young Mr. and Mrs. Dicken who were friends as much as newly weds. But with age on us. 

Everything's better with age, right?

Our friendship is deeper, more intellectual. Our love is stronger, especially after the storm its weathered. And when our hearts aren't spread thin among the needs of our children for a few days, we find devotion and strength again. Our marriage only grows.

On this Mama Drama Monday, as I face a summer schedule chocked full of camps, activities, and appointments, I reflect on the time just a week or so ago, where I sat on a beach, walked through a forest, and sipped a glass of wine on the very ground the grapes were grown, all beside my husband and my best friend. My marriage is better for it. I hope my family sees that too.