A Mommy Story

Aaron and I celebrated our nine year anniversary by visiting the scenic Hocking Hills for three days last week. I found a great deal for the Inn at Cedar Falls (not a review thing at all – bought and paid for and well worth the money) and so we left our city and drove to the hills to stay at our own little cottage in the woods.

Yes, a small cottage in the woods. Although not a very rustic cottage, however:

But in some ways, it was very rustic. As in, no phone in the cottage, no TV, no internet, and no cell phone service. We were completely cut off from the rest of the world. A chance to get away from technology and simply focus on each other, right?

So we must have looked insane as we sat in the inn’s restaurant with our iPhones, connecting to the restaurant’s wifi and desperately trying to angle our phones just right to get a cell signal to send out a text.

We might have an itty-bitty internet addiction problem.

OK, so that wasn’t all of our weekend. We did enjoy a (fantastic, incredible, amazing) dinner at the restaurant that night (in-between checking Facebook), and back in the cottage we played card games, watched The Muppets on DVD (what? No one said we couldn’t bring our laptops if there was no TV!), took full advantage of the hot tub, and enjoyed being together without the kids.

And then on our second day there, the weather switched from pouring rain to brilliant sunshine. So we went hiking. We didn’t plan on doing more than the easy trail at one park. Instead, we did the difficult trail at that one, and then went hiking in two other parks as well. Total hiking time was over four hours in the day!We had so much fun, and were in awe of the beauty of nature around us.

When we got home, we felt out-of-place surrounded by all of our technology again. It was good to be home, but it was an odd transition.

I highly recommend taking your significant other into the woods away from all technology. Well, keep the indoor plumbing and heat, of course, but no connection to the outside world. It’s a great way to reconnect, to discover new aspects to your partner, and to laugh at each other as you climb over your partner holding your phone just so pointing out a window to try for that one bar of cell signal.

Totally worth it.