Marriage Retreat!

Jay and I just got home from a Marriage Retreat up in Northwest Germany. It was a long trip, but we had a good time. We left here Friday morning and got there midafternoon. We had supper and then an evening session. We watched a video by Mark Gungor, a great Christian comedian. He does a series called "Laugh your way to a better marriage". He had a lot of great things to say! On Saturday, we watched more of Mark Gungor and also read parts of a book and watched some clips from Dr. Gary Chapman. He wrote the book "The Five Love Languages". We took a quiz to figure out how we like to be loved. The five love languages are:
1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Phyical Touch

These are how a person receives love the best. Jay's love language was quality time. He feels loved when he gets to spend time with me. I was bilingual with two love languages. I like quality time and acts of service. In Chapman's book, he gives several suggestions on how to love your spouse according to their love language. It gives great ideas!!

Saturday afternoon, we had time to spend with our spouse, no sessions. Jay and I didn't have much to do and no where to go (since we were stuck in a town with not much to do and no car). So, Jay took a three hour nap and I took a short nap and watched a movie. We had supper at the hotel and then went swimming. We spent four hours at the pool. It was a huge complex with three slides, cold pools, warm pools, hot tub, saunas. I wish I had my camera on me because Jay was loving the slides!! It would have made for some great pictures! By the time we got back to the hotel and cleaned up, it was time for bed.

Today, we woke up, had breakfast, went to a service the chaplains put on and then had our last session. We had lunch and headed out on the bus. What was supposed to be a three hour trip home turned into a six hour trip. Our bus driver got lost and we wiggled our way through back roads for a couple of hours until we finally found the autobahn. I'm glad I was able to sleep otherwise I probably would have been sick. By the end of the trip, we were all wanting off that bus!

We wish we would have been able to watch more of the videos. They were great and gave a lot of valuable info! One thing that we did this morning that I really appreciated... we talked about how to love from a distance. The guys will be deploying soon and it's hard to do a lot of those love languages from a distance. We created a long list of what to do for each other. I was glad to get a lot of the ideas. It will be nice to be able to look at the list when Jay is in Afghanistan.