Sometimes, you need to Get Away. Getting Away can take different forms, from a day off of work to spend as you please to a full-blown vacation. Getting Away might even be a work trip, with a few hours for yourself, here and there.

Though we have been together for nearly three years now, I realized a few months ago that Stacy and I had been out of town a total of one time. To be clear, I’m talking about trips taken not for Work Reasons, and not with The Littles in tow. I mean Getting Away, just the two of us, with the intention of spending time together, and to reset.

We, as people, live such busy lives. And when we’re not living busy lives, it seems like we’re constantly looking for something to fill the non-busy-ness–or something is being sold to us as a necessity, if we could only cram it in.

Last fall, Stacy and I were playing cards with our friends. It had been a particularly challenging few months prior to that, and we vented a bit about what we had been going through with our kiddos. One of our friends, a career social worker, asked with some concern, “What are the two of you doing to deal with all of this–for yourselves?” Stacy and I both just sat in silence and looked at each other. We weren’t doing anything intentional for ourselves or each other to mitigate the effects of living with two young children with Extra needs.

It would be easy to drink a little more than other people, or use other substances (we are neighbors to Colorado), but we are both fortunate that we aren’t tempted to fall into those traps. It is easy, though, to fall into that busy-ness of everyday life and engage auto-pilot, and after that conversation over cards, I realized that we had been doing that for a while.

So I looked over the upcoming calendar and found a three-day weekend. I didn’t think too hard about it; I booked a trip for us to take a three-day cruise. No kids, no dogs, and, unless you’re willing to pay the ridiculous price (and we are both pretty cheap), no WiFi or cell service. We wouldn’t have to cook or do dishes or clean anything. We could just enjoy ourselves and each other.

I am a notoriously bad secret-keeper. When I have a secret that I’ve planned for someone, it’s extremely hard for me not to tell them. I told Stacy that I had a surprise for him, but wasn’t going to tell him what until an anniversary, over a month later. He had never been on a cruise, so I was super-excited for him to have the experience.