Married with No kids! Two weeks without my boys.

So my house is more quiet now then it ever is during the day.

All four of my sweet little guys are with my mom at her house. This is a little bittersweet because I have never been away from the trips for more than one night and even Aidan has never been gone that long. I only left them a few hours ago and I am already missing them so much. They are going to have a blast, my parents have totally redecorated their guest bedroom with trains and hot-wheels and have their backyard set-up with bats, balls, toys, and a kiddie pool. I may have trouble getting them to come home to our house where there is not very much fun stuff.

This isn't just a vacation, Chris and I have a big to-do list during this rare time. Our life and our house are pretty much running on survival mode right now with just the bare minimum getting done. So these two weeks are a chance for us to catch up with life. We are redoing the floors in our kitchen and two bathrooms and putting in new baseboards in the whole house. I have to get our bills in order because right now I rely on the built in reminder system that most services offer...they will turn it off. It works every time to remind me that I haven't paid the water bill in two months. We are having a garage sale next Sunday so I am spending the evenings this week cleaning out closets and the garage so that we can purge some of our stuff that we have amassed over the last three years of total chaos. We are leaving for a family vacation with the boys the day we pick them up so I have to pack and get us ready for that and figure out what to do with all of my plants and dogs.

In addition to all of that stuff that has to get done, Chris is also on the hunt for a job that will allow us to put the kids in daycare and hopefully have some additional income. It is about $600 a week for the boys to be in school but I feel like if we can manage to pull it off that it will be best for them. These two weeks are a chance for him to get out and search for a job while he doesn't have the boys at home. Chris works on the weekend, and has his fire fighter certification but getting a job as a fire fighter has been more difficult then we originally thought.

Finally, while we have the kids out of the house, we HAVE to take some time to hang out alone and do things that we can't do when we have the kids. We are going to go to dinner alone, see a movie, grocery shop together, and SLEEP! All things that sound pretty normal or even boring but they are a big deal and very rare for us.

There is a lot of pressure on these two weeks of freedom to be very productive...we shall see how this goes.

Now I am off to start chipping away at the to-do list...was making an ice cream sundae on it?

I will be following up in a little bit with something more fun and interesting to read. ;)

Thanks For Reading,

Alex

--I just got reminded that my 24th birthday is this week! I really forgot, Chris' aunt just called to wish me a happy early birthday and I didn't know what she was talking about. You see what kids can do to you?!