time

We went away for a couple days on a mini-family vacation. We stayed in a little, log cabin, just cozy enough for my husband and me, and our three boys. We really needed a break from our routines and to re-bond together as a family and it truly is one of my favorite things to do as a family.

My husband and I start the day (the day we leave for vacation) with our normal routine. I wake up and go over my packing list over a strong cup of coffee and breakfast. I neatly cross off what I already washed, folded and carefully packed yesterday and into the wee hours of the night. He wakes up, throws some stuff in a bag, eats breakfast and wants to know what he can pack in the car and what time we should plan on leaving. I point to a pile of bags in the corner as I say, “I think we should leave around 12:00.” I have learned over our years of marriage that when I say, “around 12:00,” he actually hears “12:00 o’clock sharp...on the dot...car fully loaded, family happily singing songs and pulling out of the driveway at 11:59.” In my head, I am thinking...it would be nice to leave around 12:00, give or take thirty minutes, but I am not going to ruin the morning stressing out about when to leave until everything is packed and accounted for.

My husband really likes to be on time, or better yet, he likes to be early. I come from a family who invented their own Time, thinks being fashionable late is still in fashion and “early” isn’t really in our vocabulary. I don’t think that we are merely insensitive to other’s schedules, but I have come to understand (through a lot of thought and self analyzing) that we are overly optimistic in what we can accomplish in a given time frame, we underestimate the obstacles that could detain/interrupt us and we think we have super powers, can stop time or something of the sort.

I have gotten better over the years and my running late has shortened each year. And to be honest, my husband’s sense of time has been proven over and over again ~ when we get stuck in traffic or jumped in the car and realized we needed to get gas, etc. He will just give me a knowing grin and I smile back at him with a “you were right” look. He is growing on me. It is a good thing!!

He actually left early with our oldest son to drop his car off and to drive on ahead with him. They had a pleasant ride listening to the carefully picked vacation music that my husband put on his iPod. And I casually but methodically packed up the rest of the car and pulled out of the driveway at 12:20 with the two little boys bundled in the back seat and, yes, we were singing songs.

More on our camping adventures later.