From Coast to Coast

It's been an absolutely crazy few months around here! I don't know about you, but I feel like I blinked and seven weeks passed by! Ben and I are settling back in nicely and getting back to a normal routine. The reintegration process is slow but I'm enjoying it. It's almost like meeting your spouse for the first time all over again. Naturally, we have both changed over nine months time and it's interesting to see those changes come to life.

We just returned from post-deployment block leave and it was absolutely amazing! After nine months of separation, it's easy to want to stay at home and consume all your spouses attention. But it's not that simple. There's always the feeling we need to go home on leave - wherever home may be - regardless of how much your marriage needs some uninterrupted TLC. This go-around we decided to have it both ways! We dedicated half of leave to our families back home in New Hampshire and half to a getaway just the four of us - that is us two humans and our two fur babies!

We braved the cold for a couples shoot at a local covered bridge - a NH classic.
Photo credit goes to my sister Alexa, the owner and lead photographer of Racine Photography ❤️

Vacation began bright and early...like 2 am early. When you're traveling across the country, you have the make the most of your day! We said goodbye to seventy degree temps and hello to 70 mph winds and single digits. Guys, we don't even own winter coats anymore! Clearly I have been a Texan for too long because I completely forgot my NH winter essentials - a warm fuzzy hat, gloves, and a scarf. 😲 However, my lack of wardrobe planning was my only regret this trip.

Bradyn, 6 months old

We stayed with my sister, brother-in-law and nephew and did pretty darn well at spreading our time among everyone we hoped to see. We have learnt over the years to let friends and family come to us and/or do group visits! It's too exhausting and not time efficient to travel here there and everywhere. If someone wants to see you, they will make it happen. This visit, I was excited to snuggle my nephew, Bradyn, as much as possible and it was fun seeing Ben meet him for the first time. My sister took a picture of Ben, Bradyn and me and joked "This is your future!" We both just looked at each other and laughed. Not anytime soon! 😉 Although it was a quick stay, we made the most of it enjoyed what little snow decided to make an appearance.



Then it was back off to Texas where we picked up our fur-babies from the kennel, unpacked and repacked for PART TWO of our vacation! After leaving the artic tundra of NH, we were excited to head to the Texas coast to soak in some sun....but the universe had other plans. Apparently we brought the northern cold with us and ended up having 20 degree temps, high winds and rain for our stay in Port Aransas, Texas. Honestly, it didn't matter. We had booked this cute little Airbnb that is only a block from the beach, had our dogs with us, and had each other - what more could you possibly need?! BONUS: because of the cold weather, we had the beach completely to ourselves!

We hope to return to the coast again before we PCS, hopefully in the warmer season, but overall enjoyed our stay. I have so much to share from our adventures in the small coastal town I'm going to have to save the details for my next blog post! Stay tuned...

- xoxo -