with Angella Dykstra
I'm a mom of three, a professional accountant, and an amateur photographer and writer. I am not a marriage expert. But my husband and I take "Til death do us part" seriously, and here I'll be sharing how we keep our marriage strong while we both do that insane work-life juggle.
Check out my Work It, Mom! profile and my blog, Dutch Blitz.
I was minding my own business at work on Wednesday when the coworker from the office next to mine knocked and my door and asked me to open the email she had just sent me. It was an email with a photo attachment. I opened it up and then sat there, head down, shaking with The Giggles.
Once she left, I threw it up on Twitter, with this description:
A coworker just emailed me this photo. I’ll let it speak for itself.
…the mice hole up in Mommy’s bedroom and lock all of the doors.
My husband went on an overnight fishing/camping trip with his brother on Sunday night. He’s earned it, for sure. He balances full-time work with Daddy Daycare, which means that he often heads into the office after dinner and works into the night. He also has a wife that goes off to events like BlogHer and leaves him at home to run the ship.
While I am more than happy for him to go away and have a break, there’s something about being alone on an acreage that strikes fear into my heart. I can walk the streets of New York with friends late at night but being the only adult in charge of three smalls, while situated in the buttpoke of nowhere freaks me the heck out. We have two dogs, one large, one with a large bark, so that helps, but. I am a woman and as much as I work out, I would be no match for a strong man or anyone with a weapon.
A will is one of those things that my husband and I knew we should get but never got around to drawing up until we planned our first kid-free trip…eight years after we we were married. Not the smartest plan, I know, especially because we have kids. And, the law in the province we live in is such that if we were to both die without a will, everything goes to the youngest spouse’s family. My husband is two years younger than I am and while I love his family, I love mine too, and there are three little people we created that need to be taken care of, first and foremost.
I’m not talking about the Moms reading this. I mean, I sure hope that you aren’t in charge of organizing your Mother’s Day, unless you like it that way. We don’t make a HUGE deal about it, but I love the presents that the kids make at school and the cards and the “bigger” present my husband always gets for me. He always asks for my input but it’s up to him to make any arrangements. This year he asked if I wanted to go out for dinner and I suggested that we go to a Mother’s Day brunch instead. In over eight years of being a Mom we’ve yet to go to a traditional Mother’s Day brunch and I’m a little bit excited about it.
It was my birthday yesterday (but you knew that) and, so. Celebrating was in order. I took the day off from my office job and actually got to hang out with my kids before (and after) school. I spent their school hours playing with my new camera lens and catching up on incidentals.
My husband and I went out for a nice dinner at a restaurant on the lake.
We’ve (I’ve) planned a party for this weekend where we’ll get to hang out with our friends and eat appetizers and drink some wine and laugh. We always laugh.
What do you do to celebrate your birthday?
My husband and I are currently in Anaheim, California with our family. Why Anaheim? Because DISNEYLAND is here, that’s why. (I know that you know that Disneyland is in Anaheim and that I know that Disneyland is in Anaheim but I needed an intro to this topic, so here we are.)
We scored the deal of all deals and booked six nights in Anaheim, including five days at Disneyland (for the price of three!) and one day at Universal Studios. The days have been long and by the end of the day we are done. Done, done, DONE. Walking for twelve or more hours a day in the fresh air will do that to a person. Or five people, as it were.
Despite our utter exhaustion at the end of the day, once the kids have gone to sleep we stay up to have some grown-up time. During the day we’re constantly bombarded by, “Mom!” and “Dad!” followed by random statements/questions/facts. We’re balancing out pairing up with kids on rides and figuring out meals and who takes who to the restroom and figuring out what comes next.
We don’t get any uninterrupted time to talk. At all. Ever.
When the kids are passed out (approximately three seconds after we tuck them in) we talk about our day, discuss what our plans are for the next day and then curl up and watch mindless TV. (The Bachelor, anyone?)
We’re looking forward to having a proper Date Night once we get back home but as we don’t have regular household chores and responsibilities to tend to, the few hours we grab each night to hang out sans children has been pretty great.
How do you find alone time while on a family vacation?
It seems that the moment a couple gets married, or even starts dating seriously/moves in together/gets engaged people from all aspects of their lives feel that they have the right to ask the question, “So when are you guys going to have kids?” It seems to be assumed that as soon as you are a part of a couple, the next step will be to make little variations of you to form a “complete” family.
I always knew that I wanted to be a Mom and my husband always knew that he wanted to be a Dad and thankfully, we have been able to become parents to three of the coolest kids that this planet has ever seen. Because we both knew that kids were in our (hopeful) future, I didn’t get to upset with the questions about when kids were going to happen for us. I still found it intrusive at times, yes, but chalked it up to insensitivity on the parts of others.
This past weekend was the Thanksgiving holiday. Before I give anybody heart failure because they think that they somehow lost over a month of their lives, I should clarify that it was Canadian Thanksgiving. It’s more than a month earlier that American Thanksgiving because us Canadians are over-achievers. Or something.
Back in the summer we decided that we would head down to the big city of Vancouver to share turkey with my husband’s side of the family. My side of the family is also in the Big City (a bunch of them, at least) but for some reason the major holidays are not ones that we necessarily celebrate together. The “some reason” may have something to do with multiple marriages and divorces and whatnot, but it’s all good. We still went to visit with my family and my kids basked in Grandpa/Auntie/Uncle love.
While the turkey dinner we had with his side of the family was good and great and the time spent with people was truly wonderful, there were a lot of little factors that made it not as easy as if we had hosted it ourselves (obviously). My husband is a fan of routine, even more than I am, and he likes the same side dishes (a new one or two is fine; but let’s not throw away everything) and his standard desserts and turkey done the way we (I) do it.
We’ll be making Christmas dinner at our house, whether or not the family joins us, is what I’m saying.
How about you? Where do you celebrate the holidays? Do you slit the time, alternate, or just do your own thing?
My husband and I are firmly entrenched in our family vacation. We survived cramming the Vancouver Zoo, The Vancouver Aquarium, Science World and three dinners with extended family in the span of three days…and are now in a lovely cottage at Cannon Beach. We haven’t been on any hot dates (obviously) but have, uh, tried new things. He’d die of embarrassment if I said any more so I’ll just leave it at: we’re having a lot of fun. I don’t have much else to talk about in the marriage department and the ocean’s calling my name, so I’ll just wish you all a great weekend. See you on the other side!
This past weekend my husband and I got to discussing how happy we are at this stage in our lives. We’re leading hectic lives, yes, but we managed to make it through the baby years (mostly) unscathed. We have three neat little kids whom we actually like to spend copious amounts of time with. Don’t get me wrong - bedtime is still a magical time of day, but we don’t start looking forward to it at noon like we used to.
We started talking about the fun stuff that we have coming down the pipe as a family, and individually. Vacations, projects, new hobbies explored. We’re learning to make more time for things we enjoy, as opposed to working all the live long day, and we’re pretty content because of it.
The conversation turned to where we thought we’d be ten years from now. Our kids will be thirteen, fifteen and seventeen (YIKES). We don’t see ourselves living anywhere else but where we are right now - we’ve been here for nine years already and love it all - our home, our friends, our community. My husband’s in a bit of a flux with his career and isn’t sure where he’ll be. I’d like to be doing less (or no) accounting work and more writing/photography work. I think we’ll just be fuller versions of who we are now, but with an impending empty nest (GULP).
How about you? Where do you see yourself in ten years?
