Christmas Vacation

Last week Jon and I decided to book a Christmas Vacation. Life in the military can be very hard sometimes; they work long hours when they are home and then they deploy for months at a time. Right now we are both feeling the need for family time. We love being together just the 3 of us. At the marriage retreat a few weeks ago Jon told me he wanted to book a family vacation during Christmas block leave. We discussed going to one of our favorite places, Gatlinburg, but we knew we would spend more time shopping and staying on the go and not as much time as a family. Next, Jon suggested we go on a dream vacation and fly to Denver. Well, the airplane tickets at that time of year were WAY more than we wanted to spend. We also looked at a Caribbean beach vacation but not sure we wanted to go on that kind of vacation with Tyler. So Jon suggested we stay at Cheaha State Park in Alabama. At first I was questionable about it. When we got home we looked up online at prices, different cabins, and then we decided it would be nice family time. We are going to go on hikes, go back to where we got engaged, and a positive is we are already back home so if we needed to come off the mountain we can. We are staying the whole week before Christmas and are very excited. It is a one room cabin. The beds, couch, kitchen, etc. are all in one room minus the bathroom. It does have a TV with the local channels and we will take Tyler's little TV to plug in for when he needs Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Word World. We are planning on taking some board games and just relaxing as a family.

I want to savor every moment of Christmas season this year as does Jon. Last year was so hard with him in Afghanistan and I had the stomach flu. (Well actually everyone in my family and Jon's family had the stomach flu.) Next Christmas will be hard again because Jon will once again be in Afghanistan so we are going to make sure to spend some time together just us. We love our families and are excited to see all of them but we feel we need some time just the 3 of us during the holidays. Time for us to relax and enjoy the season. It is always so busy when we are home and everyone wants to see us and especially Tyler and we can feel like we are in the middle of a tug a war game.