You all may think from the title that this post may be about my children’s milestones or silly stories about my kids. The post is actually a somewhat honest and selfish post about myself. You see, in the 9 1/2 years that I have been a mom I have very rarely indulged and had selfish moments. My life and decisions have pretty much revolved around my kids and husband. The time that I spend during the 2 days a week that my 4 year old is in parent’s day out is devoted to either working my tail off for my businesses or spent planning appointments or activities for the kids. Even when I do something like take some time to go to the salon to have my hair done, I spend most of that time of my phone working or catching up on emails. I’m sure all of you moms can relate that we rarely have time to truly spend for ourselves.
That is where this year has been a year of firsts for me. The first first happened a couple of weeks ago when I ran my half marathon. My husband was away that weekend for his little brother bachelor party so my kids needed to spend the night with a set of the grandparents so I could get up bright and early to run my 13.1 miles. Can you all believe that that is the first evening since I’ve had kids that I have spent the night by myself? No husband. No kids. Just me, myself and I. It really felt weird to be sleeping in the house all by myself. At the risk of sounding super lame I’ll tell you all what I did that evening. Are you ready for this? I spent God only knows how much time just wandering around Target all by myself. No one begging me to buy them that toy or get them a treat at checkout for being good while I shopped. No one sending me texts messages asking me to pick up one more thing while I’m out. Just me. Alone. Shopping.
You may think that sounds super lame and I sound like a walking Target ad, but if you are a mom I’m sure you realize how peaceful shopping is when you are alone. And since I had to wake up bright and early in the morning to run 13.1 miles a night out drinking with the girls didn’t exactly sound appealing.
My next first in motherhood came this past weekend. My future sister-in-law had a weekend long bachelorette party. As a bridesmaid I was invited to this weekend celebration. This has been the first time I have ever gone away without the kids AND my husband. We spent the first night (which happened to be my birthday) at my current sister-in-law’s house. We woke up bright and early the next morning to take the 15 passenger creeper van the maid of honor rented to make the 3 hour drive to Nashville. We spent the afternoon in Nashville having lunch in Downtown Franklin, drinking amazing wine at the Arrington Vineyards and spending the rest of the evening in crowds and bars of Downtown Nashville on Broadway.
This won’t be my last time away from my family this year either. In July I have another trip to Nashville planned. This time I will be going to Beachbody Summit!! It is going to be EPIC!! I’m going to get to workout LIVE with all of the trainers I work out with everyday. I’m going to get to meet some of my team mates who have become like family. And I’m going to get to see Simon Sinek speak!
While I miss my family like crazy when I’m away from them I think taking time to take care of ourselves as moms and enjoy ourselves and some time with friends is necessary and so often very neglected and downright forgotten.
