Between my last day at Cosmos and my first day at my new job I had 12 days off…well, 11 if you count the one day I went back into Cosmos to help with “orientation” for my replacement. A few things to note about my time off…a) I’ve never taken time off over the holidays. b) I’ve never taken time off between jobs…last time I left a job for another my last day was on a Friday and I started the new gig on Monday. c) Andy & I have never had more than a long weekend off together, not counting my maternity leave. and finally d) I’ve never had that much time off. Period.

I’m not going to lie, I was really looking forward to the time off. Not only because I wasn’t going to be stressing about work or stressing about the holidays, but because I was truly, genuinely excited to spend so much time with my family at home.

There were many times over the course of those 12 days where I found myself leaving my phone in another room…sometimes hours at a time. Not caring one bit that I was disconnected. At times, I even put my phone on Do Not Disturb. It was so amazing to step away, completely guilt free.

It ended up working out where a few days over my time off the girls either went to daycare or spent a day with their grandparents. We took that time together to work on projects around the house and property. We made major progress on our chicken coop. When some people heard that’s how we were going to spend our time as “just us” they joked about how boring and practical we were. In reality, I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do. Before we had kids, we used to work on projects, both big and small, all the time. We would spend hours outside. It’s something we loved to do and often talk about how we look forward to being able to do those things again when the girls are older and a bit more independent.

I could feel the stress melting away. I could feel myself relaxing. We spent time as a family. We spent time with friends. We laughed a lot. We prepped for the holidays. We knocked a bunch of projects off of the ever-growing to-do list. We organized. We purged. We cleaned. Together.

I ended my vacation with a clean and organized house, completely revived and ready to take on a new year and a new adventure.

My new job comes with 5 weeks of paid time off to use over the next year. I’m already looking forward to using some of that time just like I did.