This week, Jordan and I are at a beautiful resort hotel in Myrtle Beach, SC. He's doing some continuing education work, but we're still getting to spend lots of time together! Yesterday while the weather was cloudy, I stayed inside and watched Downton Abbey for about 4 hours. And I'm not even sorry.
Most of the time when we travel, we're with people and/or only gone for the weekend. This is the first trip since our honeymoon where we've had several days in a row getting to relax and spend lots of time together, and I am gobbling it up.
So, in honor of that, here are five things I love about traveling with my husband.
1. He will eat anything.
I don't mean he has low standards, I mean he'll try anything. Weird, cultural foods are his jam. He loves to try something new if the occasion calls for it, and that's one of my favorite things about him. Last night at dinner, he had the waiter choose for him (because he likes almost everything). The guy brought him salmon Rockefeller and he gobbled up every bite. I think the reason I like this quality in him so much is that it speaks to his low maintenance personality - he's just here to have a good time.
2. He doesn't sweat the small stuff.
I am the planner in our marriage. I know what's happening, when, how long it will take to get there, what the attire is, who'll be there - I RSVP, send the gifts, and book the plane tickets. That is my role. But since this is his trip, I took a backseat and decided to just show up and go with it. True story: we drove here (a little over 5 hours), and about 30 minutes before we arrived, at 11:15 PM, I confirmed the hotel with Jordan. "Yeah, that's right," he said, "But text someone to make sure." (His entire dental office is also down here, so that's who he was getting confirmation from.) Turns out, we had the wrong hotel. I, of course, was basically bleeding into my brain stem that it was almost midnight and we didn't know where we were staying. But he was fine and we got it figured out within minutes. In the scheme of life, having every plan perfectly nailed down isn't that important. Jordan reminds me that we all have to loosen the hell up sometimes.
(To be perfectly clear, I will still want to know what hotel we're staying in well before we arrive in the future. Just in case you're reading this, Jord.)
3. He'll take pictures with me.
I know that many men are pretty irritated the minute their wives pull out their cell phone and try to snap pictures. Rightfully so - I don't blame them. We take too many pictures. We can't help it. Though Jordan definitely has his limit (example: selfie, take a picture of me by myself, now take a picture with me again, oh wait my hair was doing something weird, etc.), he is almost always such a good sport about posing for as many pictures as I want to take. He says, "It may not be my favorite thing, but I'll want to remember this at some point."
4. He is happy first thing in the morning.
I don't know about you, but I am a groggy, nasty wreck first thing in the morning. I'm not one of those, "Don't talk to me before I've had my coffee," people, but it definitely takes me a second to get up and moving. Jordan, on the other hand, is happy right when he opens his eyes. For example, this morning he woke up, snuggled up to me, and started laughing at me because I'd put my pajama pants on backwards last night. #classic Even in the middle of the night if I have to get up for some reason, he's so pleasant and unbothered. This makes traveling a breeze - no grumpiness to fight through, just happiness.
5. He is a big, curious nerd.
Any of you who know Jordan personally know that he is a giant nerd. If we go to a park or zoo, he loves to read every SINGLE placard in the joint - all the details about the specific types of trees and/or animals. If we're stargazing, he loves to talk about star death. And if we're beach walking, like we were yesterday, he loves to search for shark teeth (for his dad) and identify every living creature we see along the way. It's a precious habit and always reminds me that stopping to be curious about the natural world pays off in fascinating little bits of information.
SO let me go ahead and use all the cliches about him: "I love doing life with you!" "THIS guy." "So happy to be in a beautiful place with my favorite person."
...but really, he is my favorite person. And I'm really glad we got married.