I cannot believe the day is here! My husband has almost three weeks of leave for the holidays, beginning in an hour!

This is a big deal in our house. My husband never takes that much leave time. We have been fortunate enough to have him home the last few holiday seasons but that week off usually flies by as we travel to see our families.

This year is special. This year, we are dropping off our boys with their grandparents in New York and taking our much needed, seven years overdue, honeymoon!!

My husband and I have not spent seven days together, without family or our kids, since 2008 when we moved to California. And sorry, driving cross-country in four days is not exactly the honeymoon I was hoping for.

Like many other military couples we know, we were married by a justice of the peace in a little courthouse before he left for training. We were unsure of what our future held in regards to deployment. At the time we had been together for five years and  were engaged for a few months. We decided to run to the courthouse on a whim. Our "big wedding" would be later in the year with our family and friends. But this day, this day was ours and if anything happened, we were married and that was very important to us.

Now, to make a long story short, we had our big wedding during a long weekend (a 72 for us military folk). My husband had back to back schools and training so there was no time to take vacation. We figured a honeymoon would be nice for our first anniversary.

Well, deployment came and went. No honeymoon. Then a pregnancy and another deployment. One more pregnancy and five years into marriage, still no honeymoon. It became a joke at this point. I feared if we planned a vacation the two of us, my husband would deploy or I would get pregnant again. Neither seem very appealing right now.

My sweet husband who knows me better than anyone, knew I would find a million reasons not to take a vacation. So instead of planning it together, he just booked it. I am forever grateful for his spontaneity and ability to make me relax!

So here we are, 48 hours before our flight to St Lucia takes off. No deployment, no third baby. I do have a sick three-year-old and a 14-hour car ride through a snow storm to endure before takeoff but it wouldn't be our life if there wasn't an obstacle to jump. Honeymoon, here we come!