08.19.15

Matt's holidays ended a week-and-a-half ago and it was quite a rude awakening when he went back to work. We've been together for what will be ten years (ten freaking years!) this year, and never before in our lives have we had to spend so much time apart. When he was in school he worked hard but he had a lot of free time to spend with me. And he's had some pretty slack jobs. But the two of us have been pretty inseparable for years and having to go 7-5:30 Monday-Friday without him is basically torture for me, and him some days. We're one of those nauseating couples that just want to spend every waking second together and miss each other by 9AM. We're the kind of couple who, if given a choice between hanging out with friends or spending the evening in alone together, will have a really hard time deciding since we know that the right thing to do is to contribute to our relationships and friendships. But all we really want to do is collapse into each others arms and read books or watch movies or have far-too-deep-for-11PM conversations. Puke, right?

During his (far too short) holidays we spent a couple of nights in a hotel with the kiddos. Just to hang out together away from our house. It's hard to be in our home and not feel like we should be working on it; The renovations call, the yard beckons, the dishes cry out to be washed. The hotel provided a much needed escape, plus hours of fun in the salt-water pool (complete with waterslide.) These four photos really sum up those three days pretty well. When you visit a hotel with kids, almost all of your time is either spent telling them to just hang on because you need to get your swim suit on, finding out which station on the television plays cartoons and committing the number to memory, swimming, and hiding in the bathroom chatting until your children are asleep. Oliver spent most of the time at the pool climbing up and then sliding down the slide. I'm so proud of how far he's come, swimming-wise. By the end of our visit he was sliding and doing cannon balls "with no catcher!" and was just as proud of himself. Theodore, on the other hand, spent all of his pool time swimming away from anyone trying to hold him, and basically just swimming around the 3 foot water by himself. For someone so aggressively affectionate, he can be fiercely independent when the situation is important dangerous enough. He's not bad at it, though, and doesn't seem to mind getting fully immersed every so often. Definitely a little fish, that one.

It was definitely a nice change. The hotel we visited was the Best Western on Pembina and I highly recommend it to any family wanting an easy outing. The staff are extremely accommodating and friendly, the rooms are very clean and comfortable, and the saltwater pool means no burning red eyes bugging the little ones. They also include a complimentary hot breakfast in the morning, which is basically just money in the bank. (I should also mention that it's one of the most affordable hotels in Winnipeg!) On the middle day of our stay we did hop over to the zoo, but the detailed description of that excursion will have to be for another day, as it was an entity all to itself. Now I'm just dying for Matt's Christmas holidays to come around so we can have him to ourselves again. I hate to share.