Oh yeah...Napa!
We had planned for a short, romantic trip. Just mortgaged and I in Napa - wine tasting, enjoying decadent meals, and relaxing in a fabulous hotel room with no distractions. However, things do not always turn out as planned. The bed and breakfast was nice, but significantly less fabulous than anticipated. And, unfortunately for Mortgaged, work would not leave him alone from 8 until 5 each day. Things got so harried for him that we wound up leaving a day early so he could keep a particularly precarious deal from collapsing and devastating a client.
However, this is not a pity post! Once of the many, many things I value about our marriage is that neither Mortgaged nor I are prone to pouting (too much!) when things go awry. When plans fall apart, we try to make the best of the situation and salvage what we can. In this case, we worked to snatch moments whereever we could. Seth allowed me to steal him away for a few hours one afternoon for a delightful lunch at the local brewhouse, where we enjoyed great food and dissected every detail of the latest Harry Potter novel on a serene patio overlooking the river. We spent quality time each afternoon exploring a few small, less well-known wineries instead of trying to fit them all into our iteniary and discovered several real treasures. We had one perfect, decandent dinner at Cole's Chop House in Downtown Napa - if you ever have the opportunity to go, I highly reccommend it! Even the early departure did not turn out to be a tragedy. The long, late car ride provided the perfect opportunity for us to discuss, in depth, our changing life and career ideas. Under nromal circumstances, we are lucky if can even catch an hour to just talk like that. If we had left the following afternoon, as planned, Mortgaged probably would have been on the phone to the office the entire time and we would have missed out on a wonderful conversation.
Although our trip was not what we had anticipated, Mortgaged and I were able to creativly squeeze more than a little bit of fun and romance in, in between the phone calls and annoyances. No, it was not a perfect vacation but it was an excellent celebration of a marriage.