So something a bit weird is happening on Friday afternoon. In fact, a lot weird. At around 3pm the Husband and I will be leaving for three and a half days away, without the kids. Three and a half days – we haven’t spent that long together since my biggest boy was born nine years ago!

We’ve only ever done the 24 hours away thing since having kids. And we all know how that goes. If you haven’t had kids yet, here is a handy guide:

1.Guiltily beg childcare – this gets more difficult the more of the little outers you spawn.

2.Get all excited at the thought of sleep, and then realise that the Husband is getting all excited at the thought of something else entirely. Ooops.

3.Arrive somewhere. Have a beer to relax.

4.At some point between the third and fourth beer, decide that now would be a REALLY good time to have a chat rant about all the things he’s done in the last 6 months that have got on my nerves.

5.Proceed towards full blown domestic.

6.Eat meal in stony silence.

7.Possible truce for, er, something else entirely, depending on how stony the silence was and amount of alcohol consumed.

8.Wake up feeling crap, pack up, go home and tell everyone how wonderful it was to spend some time together.

Sound familiar? Yep, thought so….

So, back to this weekend. It’s an unexpected treat for me – we had been invited to a surprise celebration with some special friends, but for various reasons including the time away from the kids, the distance and the cost we had decided that the Husband would go alone, and had booked his flights accordingly….then a couple of weeks later I received this lovely message, which certainly cheered up a dull morning in work!

What lovely friends!

But, reader, three and a half days? We are used to squeezing any conversations into approximately three and a half minutes twice a day – once as I leave for work, and once in the window of time between them all falling asleep and me conking out too. What the WHAT are we going to talk about for three and a half days?  I did mention this to the Husband, who merely raised his eyes and said drily ‘I’m sure you won’t have a problem filling the silence, sweetheart’ – not sure what he means by that exactly…

But I know he is a bit nervous too –  not least because he couldn’t hide his look of relief when I messed up the online check in and we ended up in separate rows. I could practically see him doing the maths – two hours there, two hours back, well that makes a bit of a dent in it…sadly for him, Easyjet came good and reallocated the seats, ha!

This weekend feels like even more of a big thing because this time last year, we weren’t even managing the above mentioned three and a half minute conversations in a civil fashion. It was difficult to see back then how we would ever be able to move forward as a couple, and it did seem for a while as if we had reached the point of no return. But return we did, and I am glad, and I feel like going away together this weekend will be a celebration of that, especially as we are returning to the Czech Republic, one of the first places we visited together, and where we were married….awww shucks!

Three and a half days! Reader, I shall report back!

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