Marriage...

Finally I have some time to write about the wonderful weekend that I had with my sweet heart!

After agreeing that we needed to spend some time together, away from work and everything, kids included, I bought a plane ticket to Oklahoma City and asked Zach's parents to take care of the kids for a 3 day weekend.

I flew to Oklahoma on a Friday morning, after my sweet Father-in-law took me to the airport. Seeing Zach again after two months was AMAZING, I felt like I hadn't seen him in a year, it brought back memories of our encounters after 6 or  8 month deployments. We did most of the things that newlyweds do: fancy dinners, movies, popcorn, shopping and just walking holding each other... I truly feel we reconnected in a lot of special ways.

It has been an emotional rollercoaster for us lately. We struggle with our very hectic schedules and barely have time for each other, this time in our lives is a test of faith as well as a test of patience.

Now I don't want to paint some picture of marital disrepair, but I am learning that a marriage ebbs and flows. Time marches on and we are continually changing, growing and as that happens, a husband and wife must continually touch base and reconnect or they simply drift apart.

Marriage is a constant work in progress. I'd like to think that we will one day "arrive" and have this perfect blissful marriage, but the reality is that we never will. We are human and very often make mistakes, by nature. I know that I will put my foot in my mouth countless times before this week even ends, but just the fact that we were discussing the challenges and seeking to make course corrections indicated that we are both still very much in love and that we have every intention of being together the rest of our lives.

Marriage is such a richly rewarding aspect of life but is also so very complicated. I could not imagine life without Zach or our two beautiful children. Despite the challenges that do arise, I am so very thankful for these blessings. We are going to work very hard to carve out "mommy and daddy time" every chance we get, hopefully we can count on the Grandparents to babysit every now and then :-)