It's true

"The only way we can be there for our children is to be there for ourselves." (Anonymous)

Five years ago, Damian and I took a winter getaway vacation to Mexico.  It feels like a lifetime ago.

We believe that it's really important for parents to take time for themselves as a couple, away from their children.  We have had tremendous support from our own parents in this endeavour.  They've always been happy to have the girls for a weekend while we escape together.

Some think it's funny that we refer to these weekends as our business meetings, but it's not all fun and games.  We found that as the girls demanded more of our attention we had great difficulty making time to discuss our finances, our plans for the house, our travel dreams, our goals, or whatever else.  It seemed as though every opportunity for discussion was spent going over the girls education, behaviour, schedule or growing social life!  Not that these things aren't important, it's just that there was so much else we needed to talk about too.  We felt that these weekends away gave us an uninterrupted opportunity to reconnect and to make sure we were still on the same page.

Unfortunately at a time when we could probably most benefit from these escapes from reality it became increasingly difficult to plan them.  Our respite hours are expensive, limited and sometimes very difficult to plan.  We are at the mercy of available nursing. 

We'll I'm happy to say that we have 24 hours of continuous nursing planned for this weekend.  It's not an entire weekend away, but it's a start, and we're all over it!!