arizona

Back in January, when Rory and I were in Orlando for our three nights of fun, I ended our trip with a bit of a meltdown. Which might be the mild way of saying that I cried hot tears through the evening fireworks show at Epcot. Not because they were beautiful or I was moved. But because I was angry and, in retrospect, exhausted and coming off of a serious sugar crash after eating my first Cronut. 

Anyway, it was one for the record books. We had a great day all day long, but the sun had gone down while we were in the Nemo ride. And suddenly the fact that we were flying home in the morning hit me like a ton of bricks. There was so much we were supposed to have accomplished on that trip. Lots of topics we had said, “we’ll talk through in Orlando.” But the two days came and went, we played hard and suddenly our trip was coming to a close and I panicked because I still had a laundry list of things I wanted to connect on.

Instead of rationally bringing this up to my husband, in my cronut-crazy state of mind I got all mopey and dumb and lame. And botched the whole evening.  I believe the high point of the melt down was when I cried, “we haven’t even talked about when we’re going to have our next baby!” And Rory replied exasperated, “This moment is not helping us get any closer to that happening…”

Which is sort of hilarious now. (And for the record, we're not planning any babies for a while here yet...) The meltdown was epic. One that will not-be-soon (actually, never be) forgotten.

And also for the record, the cronut is over-hyped. Either get a doughnut or a croissant. But don’t get both at the same time. It's too much. And you might end up loosing your mind on your husband when you come off all that sugar.

We overdid it at Disney. It was fun to play. It was fun to be kid free. It really was super fun. But it left us both wanting a vacation, after our vacation.

So we started planning another trip. We’re in a sweet pocket of time right now with little kids that are old enough to enjoy a few days with each set of grandparents. And we're taking great advantage of this fact. 

The plan for this trip was simple: lay low. No agenda. I told Rory when the airplane landed in Arizona that my personal goal was to be attune to my own napping schedule, no one else’s.

So we just spent four nights in Scottsdale. It was lovely and in the upper 80’s, lower 90’s each day. I read one and a half books, did not get a burn and enjoyed the good company of my husband.  We hiked one morning, met up with friends for dinner one night, and visited Rory's old youth pastor for church on Sunday morning. But other than that, we were poolside, drinking cherry cokes. And the books I read greatly shaped our conversation and our time together. I'll write about those next.