On Having a Teacher Husband

In June, when I first started writing about our long road trip, I mentioned that one of the benefits of having a teacher husband is that he gets lots of time off. Around the time that he was looking into moving into a teaching career I talked to somebody whose husband was a teacher. I asked her what I needed to know about having a teacher husband. She told me that at first it's really great, but then you have to give him a list of things to do because he can get really bored. I didn't find that to be the case at all. (Maybe the things that need doing in our house are incredibly obvious. Or maybe Eric is just more observant or self-motivated?)

We really loved our first summer with Eric at home. I was on the borders of true devastation when it was time for him to go back to school a couple of weeks ago. (Although I did (and do) love it when he'd take Ike with him to his classroom to work and get organized. It's fun having only one kid!) How was I going to survive without my best friend hanging around all the time?

With Eric's time off, we took a super long road trip with stops in Colorado, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. We went to the Tetons and to Yellowstone. We played a lot. Eric kept the house really tidy. I worked more than usual to help pad the bank account. (The low salary is certainly a drawback of being a teacher.) We did projects (like our headboard). We worked in the yard and the gardens. When we had family in town we (especially Eric) got to spend lots of time with them instead of dealing with a million work crises (which was the previous modus operandi.)

Other benefits of having a teacher husband:

• Dinner is usually about 5 or 5:30. Much better with small children. (He was getting home closer to 6 or 6:30 with the old job. We frequently started (and sometimes finished) dinner without him.)
• No middle-of-the-night phone calls.
• Work stays at work (mostly).
• I can help him with his work a lot more than I could with his old job. Which is fun (usually) and helpful for him (hopefully).
• He brings home learning activities and other educational resources for our own kids.

Mostly it was just fun to have him around. With Labor Day (the first holiday of the school year) past, we're eagerly looking forward to the next school holiday in October. We're planning a canoeing trip down in Moab with Eric's parents. On the whole, we were both really pleased with the experience of Eric's first year of teaching, but the summer break definitely sealed the deal. He'll be doing this for a while.