The Last Day of Vacation

The last day of vacation is always the saddest.

My hubby has been home for the past week, and it has been absolutely glorious.  Granted, I was gone for four of his seven days off (at my best friend’s wedding out of town), but the three days we’ve had together at home have been wonderful.

We’ve spent a lot of time accomplishing random things on our to-do lists, like selling my old single girl car that we never got rid of after buying a minivan; hanging curtain rods in Ruthie’s room after discovering with terror that post daylight savings time meant broad daylight during her bedtime; storing outgrown baby gear in the crawl space under our house and hauling out the spring goodies; getting some car repairs done; going to all of our dentist and doctor’s appointments.

Today we finished all of our major to-dos and decided to go for a walk to the ice cream parlor across the street for a reward.  We situated Ruthie in her stroller, donned hats and t-shirts, and walked over to the Mountaineer Ice Cream Shop.

Of course, because this is West Virginia, the shop also sells guns, fishing gear, and assorted home decor items.  But we weren’t there for any of that–we were after one of the over 100 flavors of ice cream offered.

Because I couldn’t decide, I got a half and half of strawberry and cookie dough chip, and we wandered out onto the porch of the store to enjoy.  We sat in a rocking double Adirondack chair, Jon holding Ruthie and me holding the ice cream.  I took turns feeding everyone bites–Jon liked the cookie dough chip while Ruthie preferred strawberry.  We watched the cars go by, customers come in and out, people walking their dogs, all with the mountains in the background.

Of course, by the time we got home, it was way past dinnertime and the day had flown by.  I threw together a quick fish dinner, which turned out to be accidentally super delicious, we got the baby in bed, and now we’re finishing a last episode of our show on Netflix before vacation officially comes to an end.

It will be super painful to set our alarms for the first time in a week, I am sure.

The last day of vacation is the worst…but I’m already looking forward to his next week off in June.  The anticipation will just have to hold us over until next time!