Planning Away

I am a planner.  I always have been.  I love doing research and figuring things out for the future.  Of course it makes for an interesting struggle with military life, but I do my best to plan for all of the options I can, so that way when the time comes I already have a base from which to act, rather than having to start from square one at the last minute. My husband knows very well that I enjoy planning things, so he has enlisted my help and has given me a couple tasks.  I think he's just trying to give me a distraction from counting down the days until he gets home.  But hey, I'll take it!

First, we're hoping to do something different for Christmas this year and instead of traveling to visit family, we're going to have our own Christmas with just the two of us.  If we're able to get the time, we really want to take a vacation somewhere.  The question is, where do we want to go?  While we won't be able to get anything set until after we've moved and hubby gets settled in with his new unit, and actually learn how much time we'll have to go on a trip, we already have a list of options to consider.

We're currently keeping our options open and are looking at several different places, from visiting islands in the Caribbean or going on a cruise, to heading to the mountains & Jackson Hole, and even heading further west to California to visit Yosemite National Park and some of California wine country.  It could end up that we aren't able to get more than a day or two free, but if that happens we'll be happy getting to enjoy time at home with our fur-babies and will take a trip at a later date.  Either way we're going to enjoy just getting to be together again, regardless of where we're at.  But boy could we use a vacation together, just the two of us.

The real interesting job I've been assigned is to help plan my brother-in-law's bachelor party.  That's right, I get to help plan a guy's bachelor party.  My husband is his best man, but given the fact he's deployed and will not be home until right about a month before his brother's wedding (and during that one month our lives will be crazy as we move halfway across the country), I have been enlisted to assist with the planning process, as my husband isn't about to hand over the bachelor party planning reigns to one of the groomsmen since he believes it is his rightful duty as the older brother to plan this night.

One benefit from this is it should hopefully put our future sister-in-law at ease a little, as she is slightly worried about what sort of trouble my husband might get his brother into and is hoping they have PG-13 rated fun, rather than something resembling The Hangover.  Honestly, I think they'll behave themselves for the most part anyways.

The difficulty, however, will come from the fact that I'm having to scope out areas I've never really visited before, stretching around his home in northern Virginia.  I've been instructed to look at places as far south as Virginia Beach, and as far north as Baltimore.  If anyone has any suggestions for places around the area that might be suitable for a group of 5-10 guys to get together, and likely on a Monday or Tuesday night at the end of October, please feel free to offer them up!