Back to Life...Back to Reality

ahhhh. this past week has been fantastic! Greg and I went on a cruise to Mexico!!!

This was our first cruise experience and my first visit to Mexico and we loved it all!

It's almost hard to report on such a relaxing week when I've got life staring me straight in the eyes. Somehow we can get back from a week-long cruise at 10:30pm on a Sunday and take Monday at full speed as if we never left. What's up with that? I wish I could say I was completely ready to come back, but I loved the decreased responsibilities and the time with Greg. As my friend Ginger put it today, "we were reminded of why we got married in the first place." It's so important for married folk with kids--or without kids, too--to get away together and have fun.

It took me most of the week away to get back to my pre-kids, happy-go-lucky self. That fun girl comes up to the surface every once in awhile, but she's dormant too much, lately. I need to let her out way more often. I like her.

So, if you are in for a good read(and by "good" I mean "long"), let me get started...

We left Saturday, March 7th and drove to Las Vegas. We had never been to "sin city" together, and we thought one evening there along with visiting Dan and Tiffney (our good old Law School friends) would be the perfect start to our vacation. Well, "sin city" it is and continues to be, but we avoided the sin aspect as much as possible and really enjoyed all the beautiful artwork, gardens and architecture. There are cool shops around every corner. We rode the roller coaster at the NY,NY and just walked up and down the strip enjoying the weather, lights and fountains. We had dinner with our friends at a Diner in the base of the Stratosphere where the servers sing '50s songs. It was a great night. We finished it off with a short, but relaxing, soak in the hotel hot tub and we turned in for the night.




Sunday, we planned our day of travel around church attendance. We had timed our trip perfectly so that we would be able to attend Sacrament Meeting in Victorville, CA. We made it with minutes to spare and were shocked to find the parking lot of the church building completely deserted. Yeah. It was Stake Conference in Victorville, so we were out of luck.(note the empty church below--all the church members were meeting for a bi-annual conference at a different building)



Our luck soon changed, however. With the extra time we had gained from missing church, we decided to drive through Hollywood a little bit. Our first attempt to drive down Santa Monica Blvd failed when we missed our turn, so we ended up on the far west end of Santa Monica and decided to head back east on that street to the freeway. As we were driving along, who should appear but the Angel Moroni atop a beautiful spire! It was the Los Angeles Temple!!We didn't even know where we were going and we ended up at the Temple. Heavenly Father knew we had given our best effort to keeping the Sabbath Day holy and He blessed us with an impromptu spiritual experience. What a great surprise! The Temple grounds are so serene and were the icing on the cake after listening to scriptures on CD in the car for our Sabbath worship. It made the day for me.



From the temple we drove to San Pedro (southern LA) where our boat was docked. And what a boat it was!!




It didn't take long to board and find our room and then we were off to explore what would be our home for the next 7 days.

We did the drill. (don't we look fantastic in orange?)


We played Putt-putt.



We climbed the rock wall.



We ice skated. (yes, on a boat in the middle of the ocean)



We had dinner and went to shows day after day.




Our boat was amazing! We exercised every day, but we ate to make up for it.:) The food was fantastic. The service was unparalleled. We found little towel creations on our bed or hanging from our ceiling every night. (a couple of our faves below)



Our days at Port were Tues, Wed, and Thurs--Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta, respectively.

In Cabo we swung from the zip lines, rappelled and rock climbed.


In Mazatlan we shopped, bartered and para sailed.


In Puerto Vallarta we Scuba-dived. That was pretty awesome, but the pictures will have to wait. The underwater camera we used was "old school" and has to be developed.

On the last days of the cruise we read our books and hung out indoors a lot. The ocean wasn't very friendly, but we were happy for all the naps. We also climbed the rock wall a few more times. I entered the boat's speed climbing competition. I've never speed-climbed in my life, but it sounded like fun. When I showed up, there were three men and myself signed up. I thought, "oh, well. somebody's gotta take last place." Then the lady in charge said, "first we will start with the men's division." I was like, "what? does that mean I'm the only one in my division?" Sure enough, I took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place for the women's division!!! They were really nice about it and presented all three medals to me as if I was three separate people. It made me feel really special.:)


Sunday morning we got up to leave. We had breakfast and promptly took our bags and exited the boat. We were excited to hurry home and see the girls again. We haven't been away from them this long before, but when we got to the car, we had a flat tire! :( That delayed us a bit, but was really the only hitch in our entire trip.

If this incredibly long post still left you wanting more, just give me a call. I'm sure I'll be gushing about the cruise for at least another week or two!