No Place Like Home

There really is no place like home. One of the great things about this vacation was that it helped me realize how much I really love and rely on my 'home sweet home.' It's one thing to be at home and always wishing to get away, but it's a far greater to be away and only wanting to be home.

It is so wondefrul to be home. This morning I just couldn't help but go to wake my girls up early so I could see them and snuggle them. I came into their room and Abbie just jumped up, saying, "Mom! Mom! You're off the boat! You're off the boat!" and covered me with hugs and kisses. Yes, there's no place like home.

I am so blessed for our nice home; not for the walls or the windows or the doors, but for our family and the love that we have for each other and the love that abounds here. I loved being away, but I love even more being back.

Aunt Melissa

Today was our long journey back home, and from the moment we stepped off the boat I just wanted to be back in my own house with my little girls. Today I am so grateful for my sister, Melissa. I'm not sure if she knows how much I love her and appreciate her. Your capacity to love just really expands when you have children, and when someone loves you and your children so much. I love how much she loves my girls; I know that she does, and I know that they love her for it.

If she hadn't been so excited and encouraging when we presented this idea to her months ago, we probably wouldn't have gone on this vacation, and it definitely wouldn't have been this great or worry-free. My girls are a handful, so I wanted to make sure that no one got too burnt out or exhausted from watching them, which is why I relied on the dynamic duo of my Mom and my sister, Melissa. This way, my mom could go through her normal routine at her home, with breaks to watch the girls and help out as needed, and the girls could stay at home, in their own surrounding comforts and be with Aunt Melissa who had Mom at her disposal when she needed her.

It was so calming to know that my girls were in good hands, and when I started missing them extra hard, I just remembered how much fun they were having with their Aunt Melissa and Grandma.

I feel so blessed to have such a wonderful sister, who I know will be such an awesome mom. I am so grateful for her and for her love for our family. She is such a blessing to us.

Vacation

Today was our last full day on the cruise, and I feel so blessed for this opportunity to relax and replenish myself, and especially to be with my eternal sweetheart. Drew and I are pretty good about having date nights and enjoying our evenings together once the girls are asleep, but there's something special about having so much time together. It reminds me on when we first met, and how we both just always wanted to spend every second together, and how the more time we spent together led to the more we got to really know each other, and the more we got to know each other the more we loved each other.

Now, five years later, there are so many other factors that demand our attention away from each other (mostly work and of course the kiddos) that even our time alone together doesn't always seem like enough time to really know the other and remember what it's like to be just with each other.

This whole trip has been such a blessing. I am so grateful that we decided to do it; it was a choice. One of our close friends told us that if we waited until we had plenty of time or plenty of money to go on a vacation then we could end up putting it off forever, and so we just decided to go for it, and I'm so glad that we did. I am now recommending vacations to everyone. One of the most interesting things that I discovered about myself and this trip was that I felt plenty rejuvinated and refreshed after only two days. That means that even a weekend away with Drew can really make a difference for me, and can help us grow closer to each other, and to replenish us to be better moms and dads, sisters and brothers, coworkers and friends, etc when we return.

I am so blessed. I am blessed to have a wonderful husband whom I want to spend five days with (and eternity too), I am blessed to have two sweet girls who I've learned to really appreciate and miss even more now that I'm apart from them, I am blessed for a great family to watch them while we're away, and I am blessed for this opportunity to get a way so that I'll really want to be back and enjoy my day to day life that I love living.

Wonderful Creations

Today Drew and I spent the day snorkeling, and it was so much fun and such a blessing to see the ocean really come to life. I love seeing new places, I love seeing new animals and plants and experiencing the diversity of so many types of beauty. Today, it just really hit me again at how beautiful and blessed we are to live in this world. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are amazing- the more I see and learn about our world and the different plants and animals that also live here, the more I am in awe of how beautiful the whole system is. It is overwhelming to think of all of the different species that all play a role in magnifying their individual spheres and how each one adds and compliments the others.

Drew made fun of me today, because I used up most of my underwater camera film before I 'even got to the good stuff.' This was my first time snorkeling, and it is true that I started snapping pictures at the first tiny fish I saw, but I was just so exhilerated and excited about each and every one that I could hardly help myself. As the day progressed and we ventured into deeper and deeper water, I was wishing for more film because the ocean just came more and more to life with so much coral and exotic fish and urchins and rays that I had never seen in this way before. What a blessing it was to experience the ocean in this way, what a blessing it is to all of us to live in such a beautiful world and what a blessing it is to be a part of this great plan of happiness.

Friends At Sea

Today was a wonderful day, and there are so many blessings that I could mention, but I think I'll just focus on the blessing of friendship. It is so wonderful to have some time alone with my best ('king') friend, Drew, and it doesn't really matter that we're a world away because we always have each other. There is something to be said, though, about the addition of the friendship of others, and today I feel very blessed for Drew and I to have met some friends aboard. Amy and Kevan shared a table with us at our formal dinner this evening, and as we got to know them, it was amazing how similar and compatible our lives were. It was so fun to be worlds away and yet feel like we were talking with old friends. They joined the cruise late due to some airport trouble, and I'm so grateful that they made it and that we were able to meet them. In such a short time, I already feel like they have blessed and enriched our lives.

Drew's Sense of Direction

This morning our cross-country plane landed in Miami and we had several hours to enjoy the city before boarding our cruise in the afternoon. I feel so blessed to have such a great husband, who, among his other gifts and talents, is so good at navigating. Being in a brand new city is a little intimidating, especially when you want to save money by taking public transpotation buses to get around instead of taxis or shuttles. I guess I didn't really understand how buses in big cities work, despite my printed itinerary from their website, so it was such a blessing to have Drew just take over navigating and let us catch the correct buses to take us to where we wanted to go. For anyone who knows me, relinquishing control at all is sometimes a hard and humbling thing for me to do, so I am grateful that I was able to just quickly give in this time before I got us really lost. (Side note: my bus directions would have gotten us only a half mile away... sadly, that half mile would have to be SWAM to get to where we needed to be). It was quite fun to see the different parts of the city, and I feel very blessed today for Drew's great sense of direction to get us there.

Airport Parking

Today Drew and I left for our big vacation, and we were both very anxious to get the traveling across the country part over with so we can just relax and enjoy our actual vacation once we get there. I feel very blessed today with how smoothly the traveling went, specifically about parking at the airport. When traveling, as in just about anything else, there is so much room for anything and everything to go wrong, so when it all goes so smoothly I really feel blessed.

Our computer crashed a couple of days ago, so we haven't been able to do any of our last minute online check-ins at our own house. My mom was great in letting us use her computer to print different itinteraries and to help us find some information about parking at the airport. Deciding to drive ourselves and just park for the week was more of a last minute decision, based mostly on the rising cost of gas for others to drive both ways to drop and pick us up, but we were slightly nervous about finding a good lot that wasn't filled to capacity at the last minute.

What a blessing it was to pull into our first choice (the cheapest) of parking lots and have everything go so smoothly: we just parked in one of the many empty spaces, they picked us up right there, loaded our luggage into the shuttle and drove us straight to our gate with plenty of time to spare. I am so grateful for this little blessing that made a big difference in our travel day.