Aaaah. It’s all but vanished, but I’m bringing back the great feeling of being on vacation with my husband…and not my son.

The hub surprised me at Christmas with a trip to Montreal and nearby Mont Tremblant to learn to ski and snowboard for our anniversary. It was perfect. Let me share that story.

As far back as September, when we were still working things out, I’d get a letter in the mail every week. In it was just a paper that said “MMIM?” He wouldn’t tell me what it meant, and I couldn’t figure it out. I forgot about it.

At Christmas, I opened a box that had all this fleur de lis stuff in it. It’s a French symbol, and one they use in French speaking Montreal. There was an envelope with “MMIM?” on it.

He wanted me to Meet (Me) Him in Montreal.

AWWWWWW.

He’d been planning it forever.

Flash forward to the trip. So romantic.

I hated snowboarding and ended that day by falling on my tailbone, which, 2 weeks later, still hurts. Skiing, fortunately, was much easier. It was both of our first times. We stayed in a beautiful condo nestled into the mountain and ate lots of delicious wine and cheese. Seems like all we did was eat, after burning calories all day. We had fires. We talked. We reconnected. It was good.

We headed back to Montreal and braced ourselves against the bitterly cold wind in search of Indian food.  When we finally found it, it was well worth it. Best damn Indian food we’ve ever had.

We got to speak French, which is rare for us, but we love it.

See for yourself. Great times.

In college I got into photography. I took a few classes and had a great old Minolta. Eventually the camera started leaking light (read: broke) and I didn’t replace it. Enter husband and kid. I bought nice point and shoot cameras, but never felt like I had the capabilities I did with an SLR (read: real camera).

I have been promising myself a nice camera ever since. Somehow I always find other things to spend my money on. Until recently. While it’s not as nice as I wanted, I have bought a Nikon D3000. I realized maybe I’m not ready for a $1000+ camera and could do quite well with one half that price.

So far I love it. I’m dredging up creativity I thought was lost with the opening of my womb to another being. I’m seeing photo shots everywhere, whether I have my camera or not. I’m so looking forward to trying it out on our trip to Montreal, because my favorite shots are those I take when traveling. Which I haven’t done in as long as I haven’t had a good camera.

I have a theory. In our 30s (or mine, anyway) we rediscover our creativity, if we had it. In high school, my goal was to go to Kansas City Art Institute and become a professional artist. I later realized I didn’t have what it took to cut it (and even later realized that “professional artist” is not a true, money paying profession), so I went other routes. The sketch pads got put away. The portfolio gathered dust. But in the last year, I’ve started working on art projects, and adding photography to that just makes me feel whole again. I didn’t know what I’d been missing.

Art comes in and out of our lives as we need it. Apparently right now, I need it.

If you haven’t seen a street performer before, check out this video. Pretty entertaining.