Vacation!

I rarely get to do anything fun and exciting that surprises Aaron. About a month ago I decided that we really needed a night (or two) away, since it had been over two years since we had had a night to ourselves. And that was me tagging along on a business trip, so it wasn’t exactly an exciting getaway. For me it was great...sleeping in, laying by the pool, free food, but he had to work the whole time! So I started trying to put something together. I poured over our schedules, and realized that it had to be sooner rather than later, and with holidays, family commitments, weddings, church commitments, and a rapidly progressing pregnancy (seriously, where are the weeks going?!?), I’d just better pick a day! It ended up being the first weekend in June. Not optimal timing since it meant leaving shortly after Taylor’s baptism, but hey, it was now or never!

And while it was a needed getaway to begin with, by the end of last week, it could not have been better timing to just go away for a couple of days.
Thanks to his manager being AWESOME and helping to arrange for a Monday off work, I was able to plan a Saturday and Sunday night getaway. There was a slight kink in the plans when I found out his mom was supposed to be staying with us, but she was a good sport and didn’t get her feelings hurt when she was told “sorry, you can stay with us Friday, but then you have to leave!” So Aaron knew something was up, but didn’t know what. All he knew was that Saturday was going to be a late night.
On Saturday afternoon, I started farming the kids out. Malia and Taylor went with my parents-Aaron was a bit surprised that I had planned for them to go to Pomp’s choir concert and then spend the night with them (we don’t do sleepovers), and I hadn’t told him. Some amazing friends of ours who live in the neighborhood very graciously agreed to take the younger kids (Alaina and Lincoln to one family, Jacob and Dallin to another), and we sent them all off. I had stashed all of our things in the car and had been able to do so without being caught until right as we were leaving. dang. So Aaron hadn’t known we were going overnight until he stuck his jacket in the trunk and saw bags. oh well.
He asked where we were going and I told him we were going to a movie. I told him to just get on the freeway and take exit 6. He realized that it wasn’t a theater close by when he got on the freeway and we were at exit 275. : )
Thankfully he was surprised (something hard to accomplish!), and we had a wonderful time. The four hour drive down there just flew by. I love just hanging out with him, not worrying about having to get home, or getting the babysitter home....it was great. We didn’t get there until Saturday night, and spent the night and the next two days just hanging out and doing whatever. Sleeping in, watching a movie (two actually), hanging out at the pool....just being. One of the best moments was having lunch at Cafe Rio, people watching, and then just sitting out on their patio just hanging out together. So much fun.
We forgot to take any pictures until the drive home-so you can see our one fabulous photo here. I guess I need to follow Ashley's example and start practicing taking pictures of myself-then next time we try to take pictures while driving in the car at 75mph it will look more flattering. ; )

Vacations-without kids-with this many kids are more than rare. By our count it’s happened twice in our marriage. Hopefully we can do it again in another few years... ;)