our christmas getaway!

...well, no, its not christmas... but our vacation was our christmas present! (thanks, dad!)... any hooooo...

lee and i had a MARVELOUS time... lee's first time cruising (my 2nd). we were sad to leave our babies, but knew the time together would be beneficial for the entire family.

we spent a day in miami. went to coconut grove and stopped at the local bookstore to pick up my latest read: "skinny bitch" (i'll be blogging on that subject later.)... the clerks were so nice to recommend some fabulous LOCAL places for us to eat and enjoy while we were there. greenstreet cafe & scotties landing. delish.

then, we boarded the cruiseship in miami and spent the next day at sea. our first stop was ocho rios, jamaica and our plan was to see the "highlights" of the town and to climb dunn's river falls. seriously, these pictures don't do it justice--if this place isn't on your bucket list--PUT IT THERE. outside of seeing everything snow covered, one of the most beautiful natural things i've ever seen... and fun to boot!

here we are in the bus getting ready to tour fern gully and see the rest of ocho rios before climbing dunn's river falls:

when you get to DRF, you climb DOWN a lot of steps to the beach. you start at the bottom and climb UP the waterfall. yes, even more awesome than it sounds. this is a peek of DRF as we were going down the stairs at the park. (all the white you see thru the leaves is water... really a terrible pic, but hopefully you'll get the idea):
at the bottom... the beach!
the guides were so nice to carry our cameras for us (to keep them dry) and take pictures of us along the way... this is one of my most favorite pictures of lee & me.:
so, they said the attire was "wear something you wouldn't mind getting wet"...while other excursions said "wear your bathing suit"...i thought those were two different things. apparently not:
love my keens!! (thanks, mom!)
then we shopped around jamaica for a while--got an AWESOME wind chime, went back to the boat and after enjoying our evening, we woke up the next morning in GRAND CAYMAN! ...georgetown to be precise.
the weather was MUCH warmer here... the beaches were beautiful.
as we went back to the boat, the bus driver spotted some iguanas sun bathing on the bridge as we drove by.
see our pretty boat? ...no, not the one in the foreground ;-P
headed back to the boat... we enjoyed another day at sea the next day before haulin' a$$ back home because we both missed our babies so much! (we were able to get an earlier flight home and see our babies over 6 hours sooner! yippeeee!)
in addition to seeing the sights and enjoying the cruise, lee and i were able to rest. just rest. and enjoy an adult beverage. and then rest some more. we really took advantage of this time to just relax. and rejuvenate.... and i feel great!!! so refreshed!
some of what made the vacation so restful was the fact that we were nearly totally unplugged. no facebook. no internet. only spotty texting. on the last night of our cruise, i a.l.m.o.s.t. broke down and bought the package internet minutes from the cruise... but i didn't. whew. i was starting to get the facebook & blog withdrawls.

...you wanna know how bad my "withdrawls" got? i read an entire book (skinny b!tch, remember!?). i know, go ahead an pick your jaw up off the floor. TWICE. i read a book twice. wow.

and not to complain or put a damper on things, but i VERY seldom get to listen to my ipod (you know, with my 6 block commute to work...)... so, i updated everything and was loaded to go--when we get to miami... and my iPod says "no content". so lee, in his quick resourceful thinking said "just download a couple of albums to enjoy on the trip... so i did. only for them to charge my credit card and disappear into the iAbyss. apple care was so helpful and told me they'd be able to fix the problem almost immediately as soon as i could hook it up to my computer. stoopid.

i know we've thanked each of them personally--but i wanna give a blog shoutout to nana and kiekie... they both took turns staying here at the house taking care of our babies. a selfless gesture that made the trip all the more enjoyable... thank you thank you thank you... even though i really can't thank you enough.

and eden... sweet eden... she did so much growing while we were gone!! she's certainly losing the "baby look" and looks an awful lot like a toddler. she's expanded on the squealing game... she loves to squeal with excitment... and by golly, the girl has gotten VERY squirmy in the last week. i think we're saying "so long" to the baby days and hello, toddlerhood. she had her first sippy cup of milk with her dinner tonite and seemed to like it. and her papa got her a new nightlight (that seems to be doing the trick)... [sigh] where's the pause button?

so, what did we conclude from this trip?

we love cruising and will certainly go again.

we likely won't go down a day early next time unless we have intentional plans for the day.

we may not go on another vacation without eden for a long time. like, a really long time.... how long were you thinking? multiply it by 3. we missed her terribly. nershi, too.

since we apparently go on a vacation (like a TRAVELING vacation--not to the nc beaches.) every 4 years, we're thinkin' next stop: DISNEY! :)

that's all i can think of right now... next up: the food challenge update.

well this is all i can tell you...

...about vegas... because you know the old saying! :)

*this will be in short sentence fragment/bullet form... because we did TOO much to include all details... and besides, it's VEGAS! i can't say but so much anyway ;-D

SUNDAY

once our plane took off super early sunday morning,

i had to get the trip started off right!

dad had gotten each of us $25 worth of scratch off tickets...

rebekah won $25... and the rest of us won $5 or $10...

we arrived in vegas a little early (two thumbs up for southwest airlines!)

headed to the hotel, enjoyed the sunday breakfast buffet... yum!

checked in our room

gambled a bit... showed rebekah the ropes! haha

sunday night, we had dinner at bellagio

and enjoyed "o" by cirque du soleil...uh-may-zing.

after the show, we caught the water fountain spectacular outside the bellagio...

...a "choreographed routine" to viva las vegas by ELVIS!

then hopped a cab back to mirage to see the volcano (their feature outside)

and CRASHED at bedtime... i'd been up for

t.w.e.n.t.y. o.n.e. hours with only 3 hours of sleep the night before!!

...wow, i'm gonna try NOT to go that long with that little sleep EVER again.

MONDAY

the jeeeeewelry shoooooooow

glitz glamour handbags

...all at wholesale prices!

and i tried to be diligent this year and get a jump on my CHRISTMAS SHOPPING!!

check! i'm about 1/2 way done, now! :)

TUESDAY

surprise, rebekah!

we're going to the PRICE IS RIGHT!

...at bally's... no, not the one on tv hosted by drew carey...

but this one is supposedly very similar...

after we registered to COME ON DOWWWWN!,

we had a few hours to kill, so we visited the venetian and the wynn...

shopped, had a few drinks...

got back to bally's...

we all decided it was a really fun way to spend the afternoon, but i've still got "going to the price is right" on my bucket list... it wasn't EXACTLY like the show... not close enough

BUT!

it was hosted by drew lachey (nick's brother, who won dancing with the stars)

and the announcer was the guy who hosted the old game show

"supermarket sweep"

gambled that night... enjoyed dinner at the hotel... gambled a little bit more

then we went to treasure island to see the pirate ship show (their outside feature)

(...i think... or was that wednesday night?!)

WEDNESDAY

hommmmmmmmmmeee!!

we left our hotel around 6:30am (vegas time)

had a layover at midway airport in chigago

and got home after 7pm...

...without going into a lot of detail, my grandmother has been dealing with serious bouts of vertigo... she decided a week ago to not go on our trip for fear she'd have a go of it while we were out there... but she later changed her mind and decided to "fight it" (granted, there's not much "fighting" you can do to vertigo)... well, wouldn't you know it, she came down with a tough spell of it super early tuesday morning (like 3am-ish), and ended up visiting a dr. in vegas to get a shot to make the flight home BEARABLE.

she was such a trooper and i'm so glad she was able to go and be a part of the special 21st birthday celebration for rebekah :)

i had a balllll! and the BEST part?!

coming home to my sweet little girl playing with her daddy and nershi :-D

its been an adjustment to get caught up on the sleep i missed in vegas

(and i've been working every day since i got back covering for granny & catching up!)

and getting back on "eden standard time"

but after a SERIOUS nap after work on saturday

(thank you, eden for planning your nap when mama got home from work)

and a good night's rest saturday night,

i'm proud to say that i'm back among the living!

annnnd here are the pictures from our trip!!

first family vacation

...with eden, that is.

this trip was full of fun, firsts, and learning moments.

nershi was not a fan of the fireworks...

he hung close by whoever seemed to be farthest away from them...

(we got down there around dinner on the 4th...

and according to nershi, armageddon was happening just after dark!)

he did, however, love watching kiekie! do yard work... from the inside.

eden was a DOLL the entire time we were there... extra long naps, never got off schedule, was fun to be around, was rarely fussy, and was such a show-off with her smiles and sweet personality... and a ham for the camera!

she had several visitors and we even ventured out to the mall...

on the way down, she enjoyed her first bottle of (extremely diluted) juice*!)

*technically, this wasn't her very first bottle of juice--

but this one wasn't for medical purposes! haha

she had her first night out of the house (as in sleeping somewhere else other than home!)

it was her first trip to pop & kiekie!'s

she enjoyed her first boat ride... and she even got to drive! she LOVED the boat ride...

...the life-vest?... notsomuch.

she had her first dip in the pool... the verdict is still out as to whether or not she liked it...

she enjoyed her first stroll in the bob facing forward (not in her carseat)... i'll let you decide if she liked it or not :)

we also had a close call. a VERY close call... with the dog. i won't go into each dramatic detail--because it was not my finest hour... or lee's... but i will say that lee and nershi went running on wednesday morning and nershi got too hot and almost had a heat stroke. luckily, mom googled the symptoms and we were running cold water over him then mom & lee took him to the vet and he was re-hydrated with fluids and was VERY WELL taken care of... he's since made a full recovery and we are SO THANKFUL for the Lord's mercy and for the quick response we got from the fine folks & dr. resnick at vca-wrightsville beach animal hospital. wow. a valuable lesson was learned. and if i thought i couldn't love that dog anymore than i already did... i do now. ...and while we're still "talking" about this--don't actually ask me about this in public. i will cry. i'll tell you about it if i feel like talking about it, but don't ask, k?

this vacation (minus our puppy excitement) was the perfect vacation...

lee and i had date night... we went to see "knight & day"--GREEEEEEAT movie!! LOVED IT! (and i am NOT a tom cruise fan...)

mom and i had some time to shop for youknowwho

and got some stuff on clearance for NEXT summer...

and my faaaaaaaaavorite part of a vacation? DOING NOTHING. there were days i slept till 10am then took a nap at 12:30... it was nice to stay up late and sleep late and take a nap... and heck, mom even did night duty for a couple of nights... YAHOOOOOOO!! :) (even though night duty is a bit of a gamble these days... she's waking up less and less each night)

(eden's classic "milk drunk" face!)

its so nice to go on a vacation and not come back more tired than you were when you left. oh, and its nice to come home to a clean house, too!! i had the time sunday before lee got off work to pack everything neatly in the back of lee's car and clean the house so we'd have nothing pressing when we got home (except for grocery shopping!)

oh, and how could you forget... the group shot!