And He's Off . . .

It's just the little ladies and me for the next 11 days.  That's some pharmacy conference Mate must be attending, right?  Nope.  Our guy is on his way to Thailand and Taiwan just for fun.  See, we have this really great friend who travels to some pretty amazing places for his job.  He casually invited Mate to tag along one time, which I decided was too good of an opportunity to pass up.
I'm not exactly in a rush to travel to Asia and it's not anywhere we're planning to go as a family in the near future.  At first, Mate was quite hesitant to take this time for himself, but I assured him it was a good idea. When you get married in your early twenties, spend the second half of that decade welcoming three children into the world and put massive amounts of time and effort into building a career, it's important to take a step back from all that responsibility.
Sure, they'll be more parenting for me while he's gone, but there will be less of the other stuff:  less cooking, less bed-making, less table-setting, less laundry, less routine. The girls and I have quite an agenda planned for ourselves and we'll splurge a little on fun while Mate's away.  We've already purchased a new game for the iPad and had donuts for breakfast . . . fancy hotels in Thailand don't have anything on us.

Our plan includes a trip to the museum, dentist, starting Pre-K, going to the fair, exploring a farm, shopping, treats, ballet, spending time with family and having sleepovers.  I asked each of the girls to draw a picture to go along with our agenda- Ava drew her daddy getting ready to leave, Mia drew ice cream (she's also the one who decided we needed to add treats to the agenda) and Eliana drew a picture of her and I going to see Cinderella (that's not happening, so hopefully she is satisfied with our other plans).

Wish me luck patience . . . lots of patience.