California, Here I Come!

I arrived at LAX at about 10:00am local time. After a four hour flight I was happy to be grounded again. I was totally unimpressed by the airport though. It looked as if maybe they were doing construction..? Either way, I felt like I had to walk miles to get to baggage claim and then catch a taxi.

Once I hopped into the taxi it was only a couple miles to the hotel. Holy ish!! Those couple of miles took over an hour! It's ridiculous! I checked the GPS on my phone once we 3 miles away and it said that with traffic it'd take 15 minutes. Um excuse me, what?! I wasn't overly impressed with the appearance of the area either. I always tell Hubster that once he's out of the army, if there's one place that I refuse to move back to, it's Miami. Scratch that. Los Angeles now tops that list.

Both of the hotels that we've been at have been very nice though. The picture in this post is from the Shangri-La hotel in Santa Monica. We are right across from the street from the ocean and a very short walk from the pier. Santa Monica is beautiful. Traffic is still awful.

The west coast is completely different from the east coast. And I thought the driving in Miami was bad..! can't wait to see more.

Fellow Moms: Help!

I'm at my wits' end with trying to figure out how to get V to bed at night. After Hubster left to Afghanistan in December, I had the girls on a pretty strict daily routine. It made it easy to plan daily activities, meals, shopping trips, everything. Since we've been back from our R&R cruise though, I've had the most difficult time getting V to nap and go to bed at night which pretty much throws everything off.

The face of an angel...

 Before leaving her with my parents, V used to go to bed at 8:30 and sleep perfectly through the night. Now it's a miracle if shes in bed by 10:30. Along with going to bed way too late, somehow she makes her way down to my bed at night. I usually don't even notice until the morning. I know this all has to do with the fact that she slept between my parents for a week and usually they are up until 10 or 11.

I've tried going back to our normally routine, to which she violently protests. Warm milk doesn't work. Children's cough syrup with sleep aid doesn't work (in my defense, she did have a cough). I locked her bedroom door and she busted the lock. I've let her fall asleep on the couch before taking her upstairs. One night I tried letting her sleep on the couch. So moms, any ideas for getting this bundle of joy to sleep in her own bed all night? I don't want her in my bed and I don't want her screaming through the house waking up the baby..

I Should've Been a Mechanic

Ok, not really.. But I've seriously impressed myself with Hubster being gone.

Saturday I woke up to both car batteries completely dead. Lovely. The Tahoe was parked head-first in the garage so there wasn't really a way for us to jump start it. Thankfully Jacquie was at the house and she was able to drive us around everywhere.

Our first stop was Walmart for a new battery. Whoa. The price was a bit of a shock. They didn't have the correct battery though so we averted that financial crisis. What to do next though..? Call daddy of course! He suggested that we buy a trickler (battery charger) so we did.

Upon arriving home, I hooked up the battery charger to the car/battery and let it go for a few hours. When the meter said the battery was charged, I disconnected the thing from the wall and then the car. The car started right up and is still starting effortlessly.

The day that I dropped Hubs off at the airport to go back to Afghanistan, the car overheated on the way home. It figures that terrible things would happen when I'm already in a bad mood and have no husband to help me out. Damn Murphy's Law. Even though the only issue was that the coolant needed to be refilled, I was mighty proud of myself for doing it on my own.

With Hubs gone I've also changed the headlights on the truck, fixed the garbage disposal, put up gutters, landscaped the yard, built a fire pit, and installed a shelving system in my closet. Google and my dad have been invaluable resources. It's pretty amazing what all you can do when you have no other choice.

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean - Day 7

Oops. I definitely dropped the ball on blogging these past couple of days. It's been so tough getting V to go to bed and stay there.

Day 7 of the cruise was a day at sea. For Hubster and I it meant a lazy day. The majority of the time was spent wandering the ship or eating.

We played bingo, where I won $120. It was quiet exciting. For $20 I got 3 bingo cards which were good for 5 rounds of bingo.

At the photo gallery we collected all of our pictures from the week and chose the ones we liked best. The photo company has this card where you can buy certain combinations of pictures and get additional ones for free/very cheap. We purchased our embarkation picture, a picture from dinner, and one of the pictures from one of the ports and got another dinner one for $5. Pretty good deal.

Around lunch time the Chocolate Extravaganza was happening in the buffet. I was super excited to go to the extravaganza but honestly, it wasn't much of an extravaganza and there wasn't much chocolate. At that time, the Mongolian Wok was also open. Unfortunately I had to wait in line for half an hour for that. It was slightly understandable since they do cook the food right there in front of you.

Just before dinner, our Future Cruise Certificates were ready to pick up. We always buy the certificate because it's basically free money as long and you commit to cruise with Carnival again. The $100 that you use to purchase the certificate is later applied to the balance of whatever cruise you choose. The amount of free on board credit that you receive on the future cruise is dependent on how many days you sail. Since the cruise we did this time was 7 days, we received $100 in free on board credit.

Even though it was a lazy day, we had fun relaxing. During our downtime we packed out suitcase since it had to be outside of door by 11pm. It's always a little depressing knowing that your vacation is over, but knowing that we'll be cruising again makes it not so bad.

 Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean:

Day 1 -Leaving Miami

Day 2 - Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

Day 3 - Day at Sea

Day 4 - St. Thomas, USVI

Day 5 - San Juan, Puerto Rico

Day 6 - Grand Turks, Turks and Caicos

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean - Day 6

Grand Turk was the final port of call on our Exotic Eastern Caribbean Carnival Cruise. Since we weren't arriving at the port until 11:00am, Hubster and I were able to have breakfast (French Toast, of course) and then lounge in the Serenity area while we watched the ship dock on the pier. Even once we had docked,  Hubs and I stay up in the hot tube watching people getting off of the ship. We wanted to avoid the terrible wait that we had the day before.

When we got onto Grand Turk, we checked out the duty free shop for a little and then made our way to the Margaritaville pool. We were lucky to be early enough to find lounge chairs pretty close to the pool and almost under an umbrella. We spent the after noon in Grand Turk in the pool with big souvenir cups filled with margaritas and a $15 bowl bucket of nachos. Delish! It was honestly the best way to spend our day! One of the best parts was the free WiFi. Granted every other bar on the island has free WiFi also, but no one else has a swim-up bar that you can use the internet at.

The last time that we were in Grand Turk, it was kind of a crappy day weather-wise. It was overcast  and rainy. The time that we spent on the beach was nothing special and the snorkeling was not as good as I was expecting it to be. We went to Jack's Shack, where Hubster enjoyed the conversation but I didn't think what we got was worth the prices they were charging. We were both much happier doing Margaritaville and will likely return there next time we are in Grand Turk. Before this trip we really had no interest in going back to Grand Turk but luckily, the island redeemed itself on this trip.

Just before we headed back to the ship, I made Hubster go with me to the beach on the right side of the pier to pick up a couple conch shells. This was another thing that I had read about on Cruise Critic. The majority of the shells were broken but we did manage to find two that weren't totally banged up. Even after shell shopping, we made it back to the ship early enough to avoid the lines.

The second formal dinner took place on this night. I found it a bit odd since we were at the port pretty late. I thought it would have made more sense to have it on the following night which was a sea day.

The links below are for the other days of our cruise.

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean:

Day 1 -Leaving Miami

Day 2 - Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

Day 3 - Day at Sea

Day 4 - St. Thomas, USVI

Day 5 - San Juan, Puerto Rico

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean - Day 5

It turned out to be a beautiful day in Puerto Rico! The weather was overcast with occasional random sprinkles here and there but it was perfect to explore. We may have died if it had been sunny out.

As we exited the cruise port, we made a left and headed towards the coast. Our goal was to walk on the path to El Morro and do some exploring there. It turned out that the path was closed so we  back tracked a a block and made it that way. I'm not going to lie, some of the neighborhoods were rather sketchy. But, we made it alive and with both kidneys. Silly me. I had read about a free trolley on Cruise Critic but completely forgot until we were already at the fort.

 

The price admission for El Morro was $3 but you could buy entrance to both forts for $5, which is what we did. Usually I have no interest in the whole history thing but I loved touring these fort. There was so much to look at and the structure was beyond impressive. After a few hours, we hopped on the trolley (with the crazy driver who was trying to kill us) and rode to the other fort, Castillo San Cristobal.

Castillo San Cristobal was even more impressive than El Morro. The walls are kind of built into the hills. It was just beautiful to explore.  I was extremely happy with paying the $5 and touring our selves versus a guided tour. There were enough placards everywhere that guiding and reading yourself was enough.

Before heading back to the ship, we wanted to grab some good Puerto Rican food. There was this little restaurant/bar called Punto de Vista almost just across the street from the port. OMG it was good!! I had been craving mofongo the whole trip and theirs definitely lived up to my expectations. Especially since it had skirt steak in the middle. I ordered churrasquitos which were steak stuff burritos. Hubs and I shared this Puerto Rican rice that neither of us had ever had. It was rice and beans with sweet plantains cooked in.

Thankfully, there wasn't a huge line to get back onto the boat this time. At least not for us. I guess we made it back early enough to avoid all that.

I can't remember what we had for dinner this night but I do remember that they were serving Bitter and Blanc for dessert. I wish it had been available on more nights. It was probably better than the melting cake. I'm sure if I would have asked, they could have made it available but I didn't want to be that person..

IF you'd like to see the rest of our cruise days, click below.

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean:

Day 1 -Leaving Miami

Day 2 - Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

Day 3 - Day at Sea

Day 4 - St. Thomas, USVI

Day 6 - Grand Turks, Turks and Caicos

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean - Day 4

Hello beautiful!

Hubster and I were sitting down eating breakfast as we pulled into port at St. Thomas. The view was gorgeous! The water was perfectly crystal clear and you could see all the way up the vibrant green mountains. It was a perfect addition to the bomb.com French Toast we were munching.

Getting off of the boat on this day took a little bit long than before. Not sure why since we were just walking off.. The lines were very long though. Once off the boat, we made the 10 minute walk to Paradise Point to ride the sky ride. I would totally recommend this to anyone considering it! You get such a perfect picturesque view of the islands. If you buy the excursion through the ship, you  actually save $2. At the top of the ride there is a short hiking trail plus a bar/restaurant and gift shop.

At 1pm we had our Power Cat Snorkeling excursion. OMG.It was the best excursion we've ever been on. When we had previously visited Grand Turk, we did something similar but this time was much much better. On the snorkeling excursion we were taken out to an island which is a protected sanctuary for birds and animals. Since you can't go on the island or anchor, we tied off on a bouy. I was expecting to see tons of big colorful coral formations, but that wasn't the case. The scene was more or less what I'd see diving off of my dad's boat in Miami. Except there were sea turtles! That was absolutely the best part! Hubster and I waited above them as they chomped on the grass on the sea floor. We were lucky enough to catch 3 of them surfacing for air.

For the second part of the Power Cat excursion, they took us to this little beach where we had the option of snorkeling some more or beaching. We chose to beach since you couldn't start drinking the unlimited rum punch until you were done snorkeling. For $79, this excursion was a great deal. At least for us. Our inner frat boy and sorority girl came out and I'm pretty sure we got our money's worth. There was a doctor lady there that we chatted with who may have been slightly more intoxicated than us. We had a blast with her and her son though.

Once the excursion was done, we made our way back to the ship, which had an abnormally long line to board. If I had one complaint about this vacation, it would definitely be the lines getting on and off the ship.

The two of us slept straight through dinner. Just before the buffet closed, I was able to stumble over and pile everything that looked good onto a plate. Miraculously I made it back to the room without getting lost. I couldn't get Hubster to wake up so I ate alone. Eventually he got up and we ventured out to find him something to eat.

Tomorrow's adventure is San Juan, Puerto Rico. Check out the other days below.

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean:

Day 1 -Leaving Miam

Day 2 - Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

Day 3 - Day at Sea

Day 5 - San Juan, Puerto Rico

Day 6 - Grand Turks, Turks and Caicos

Thankful Thursday

This is last week's post but I definitely feel like it applies to this week as well. At least the bottom part. I'm loving my Kirby by the way...

Well. Today was quite an eventful day. I was finally able to buy my Kirby vacuum. I had been trying to get the salesmen to my house forever and they randomly knocked on my door this afternoon.

So this week I am thankful that I have an amazing husband that works and supports our family financially. I have the ability to stay at home with our girls to mold them and watch them grow. We own a beautiful house in a cute little town with a yard for the girls to play. I am thankful for everything that Hubster does and provides for us. I'm thankful that I was able to spend a ridiculous amount of money on a vacuum cleaner today and Hubs was perfectly fine with it because it made me happy.

Yes. This is semi-materialistic but, I am thankful that we are able to have nice material things.

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean - Day 3

Sea day! Hubster and I used sea days to kind of chill and bum around the ship. Oh, and eat. We really didn't do much other than that.

Early on in the morning we went up to the Serenity area and hung out in a hammock with the Nook. The Serenity area was seriously a blessing on this trip! With it still being summer time and there being so many children on the cruise, it was great to be able to be away from them. And I guess because so many parents didn't want to leave their kids behind, the Serenity area was usually pretty empty. The attendant did a great job of keeping kids out.

On the last cruise we went on, Hubs spent more money than he should have on art at the auctions. This time he insisted that we check them out. He's all about the Statue of Liberty/American Flag art. Thankfully, he had no interest in the art that they were offering this time so we got our free champagne, looked around a little bit and left!

My favorite part of this first sea day was that it was also the first formal dinner night. Not only do you get to dress up and be all pretty, but usually the menu is a fancier-ish. For dinner on this night, Hubster got shrimp and lobster. They shrimp and lobster were both kinda small but Hubs said they were good. I am a beef girl so I went with the steak. Medium-rare. Yum.

 On their menus, Carnival offers a "Didja" option as an appetizer. "Didja" as in, "didja ever try ___". On this night gator fritters were being offered. Usually I am not adventurous when it comes to food. At all. I did give these a try though and they were good! I'm not sure if alligator is normally sweet, but these had a hint of sweetness. They weren't tough or chewy at all. I guess I wouldn't expect a fritter to be tough though.

On this night, just like every other night, I had the Warm Chocolate Melting Cake for dessert. This thing is amazing! If you're on a Carnival cruise, you need to try this! I had one of these for dessert every single night. That's also partially because the other desserts didn't interest me. A huge warning, most of the sugar free, healthy desserts suck. Sorry.

Tomorrow's blog cruising covers the beautiful island of St. Thomas. You can check out the first two days of Hubster and I's cruising adventure below.

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean:

Day 1 -Leaving Miami

Day 2 - Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

Day 4 - St. Thomas, USVI

Day 5 - San Juan, Puerto Rico

Day 6 - Grand Turks, Turks and Caicos

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean - Day 2

We were at Half Moon Cay, Bahamas (Carnival's private island) by the time we woke up Sunday morning. We got ready for the day and headed down to the Silver Olympian dining room for breakfast. The breakfast in the dining room is pretty much the same food that you'd receive in the buffet but Hubster didn't want to wait in lines and wanted to be served.

For breakfast I got a ham and cheese omelet that I couldn't finish, sausage, and hash-browned potatoes. I was disappointed that the hash browns were pretty much McDonald's hash browns. The sausage was good though! And they guava jelly on a croissant...spectacular!

After breakfast we made our way directly to showroom to get tender stickers. We waited about 5 minutes before we were on the little boat to the island. The tender boat takes 5-10 minutes and they send you on your way. The beach is right off of the path. Hubs and I walked a little so that we could be close to the pirate ship bar thing. The pirate ship is where they had all of the music and drinks. We each had two Long Island Iced Teas and were pretty good to go.

For lunch on the island, the crew brings off food from the ship and they do a BBQ.They have stuff like hot dogs and burgers and this yummy coleslaw with raisins in it.

After a brief drunk nap on the beach, we headed back to get in line to get back on the tender back to the ship. We waited about an hour. The line sucked and once we got attached to the ship, the line to actually get back aboard also sucked. One of the little pingers that swipes your card was broken.

We had a second lunch back on the ship. The famous Guy's Burgers. They didn't live up to my expectations but they were really good. Especially with bacon on top!

Dinner this night was much better but still not great. They did remember that we liked espresso after dinner though. That was definitely a plus.

After dinner we went to all three Adult Comedy Shows. Happy Cole performed twice and random less funny guy was in between. Happy was great! He was so so funny. The other guy was funny too but obviously no memorable.

Half Moon Cay was still as good as we remember and we'd definitely be willing to return. Monday was a sea day which means art actions..! Yay...... I'll post about that tomorrow.

Read about our other cruise days below.

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean:

Day 1 -Leaving Miami

Day 3 - Day at Sea

Day 4 - St. Thomas, USVI

Day 5 - San Juan, Puerto Rico

Day 6 - Grand Turks, Turks and Caicos

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean - Day 1

Exactly two weeks ago, Hubster and I set sail on our week long trip on the Carnival Liberty. And boy let me tell you, it was liberating. After 7 months alone with two kids and a hyperactive dog, I needed a break from life. For the next seven days I'll be post a day by day look back and review of our cruise.

We chose the Exotic Eastern Caribbean itinerary because of the ports that it visited. It was a seven day cruise (Saturday-Saturday) and visited Half Moon Cay (Carnival's private island), Bahamas; St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos. We had been to Half Moon Cay before and absolutely loved it. This was one of the few cruises that we could find that didn't offer Nassau or Cozumel, which we had no interest in visiting. Our previous experience at Grand Turk wasn't fantastic but it definitely wasn't a deal breaker.

At around 10:30 am, Hubster and I were officially on cruise mode. We had my mom drop us off at the Port of Miami. Thankfully my parents live about 20 minutes from the port because I believe parking is $20 a day. No way in hell would I pay $140 to just have my car sitting around unattended. We made it to the port right around 11:00 am which was perfect! We were able to breeze through security (with our two allowed bottles of wine) and check-in without an issue. Once we finished checking in we sat and waited for our zone to be called. The wait was about half an hour but we didn't mind since we were sitting and able to connect to the the free WiFi.

When we had previously cruised, Hubster insisted on leaving the house later which meant we didn't arrive at the port until about noon. Although we were able to board the ship as soon as we checked in, we spend tons of time waiting in lines. This time around he couldn't stop going on and on about how arriving early was definitely the way to go. Duh! I told you so!

Once we were on the ship, we dashed upstairs for the buffet. One of the best parts about cruising is all of the food! I saved us a table with a view of the city while Hubster loaded up a bunch of random things on a plate. There were cheese cubes, some sort of tilapia that he loved, pickled vegetables, chicken breast, eggplant parm, breads, browned potatoes, tons of everything. After finishing up the meal, we explored the ship a little. Just after 1:00 pm we were able to drop off our bags in our cabin and do some more exploring.

We sat at the Redfrog Rum Bar for a bit chatting and sipping. I ordered a Mango Magic which was fabulous!!! Hubs had some boring beer.

At 4:00 pm we went to do the muster drill. It was awful. I think it lasted longer than it needed to and it was just plain uncomfortable. We were all squished together and hot and sweaty. I hate being touched while I'm sweaty and I hate being touched by sweaty people. Barf.

Once all of that craziness was over though, we actually set sail. My parents and the girls were at the end of the beach so we went to look for them. Thankfully my dad had a huge American flag so we were able to easily spot them.

I think around 5:00 pm-ish the spa was doing raffles for spa credit so we went to check that out. Of course we didn't win but Hubs booked us for a much need couples massage. The massage was fantastic. It was this head to toe thing that is normally some outrageous price, and we got it for $129. It was one of those "specials that they only offer at embarkation".

We chose to do late dining which is 8:15 pm. The massages left us feeling greasy so we washed up before dinner. Service at dinner on the first night was horrible. I was really surprised and I hoped it wasn't a sign of what the rest of the week was going to be like. I think one of the assistant waiters may have been new and slowed down the process more than helping. I honestly don't even remember what was for dinner because the experience was so bad. Our three course meal took over two hours for just the two of us at the table. Thankfully all of our other dining experiences were much better.

At bed time I felt a lot of movement. I heard that the higher up in the ship you are, the more movement you feel. It makes sense if you think about it. In the future I'd consider going a little lower in the ship. The movement wasn't totally horrible though. And after all, there were two or three tropical storms headed in our direction.

Even with the few little negative things going that happened on our first day, I'd still say it was a good day. We were on vacation..! The first stop was Half Moon Cay, Bahamas which I will be posting about tomorrow. We were most excited about this port because of how beautiful it is!

Carnival Liberty - Exotic Eastern Caribbean:

Day 2 - Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

Day 3 - Day at Sea

Day 4 - St. Thomas, USVI

Day 5 - San Juan, Puerto Rico

Day 6 - Grand Turks, Turks and Caicos

Microwave S'mores

I spent the better half of my afternoon walking back and forth between the couch and microwave. Awesome, I know. I really had no desire to eat anything other than s'mores.

The night before Hubster left, we stocked up on graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate with the intention of putting our brand new fire pit to use. Well that was a fail. Recently, Hubster and I became old people, so the entire time he was home we went to bed way early. Like 9:30 early. Needless to say the s'mores didn't get made and we didn't stay up all night like originally planned.

In the past, Hubs and I have made s'mores in the microwave so I decided to just do that since it's somewhere around 239 degrees outside. Making s'mores in the microwaves is ridiculously easy. Probably easier than making them in a campfire. To make these little treats you need everything that you'd need for regular s'mores. And by everything, I mean the graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate.

Take the graham cracker and split it in half if it isn't already to s'more size and put it on a plate. Stick your marshmallow on top and pop it in the microwave for 15ish seconds. You want it about double in size. Just don't let it explode! Once it's done heating, remove your plate from the microwave, top it with your chocolate square before the marshmallow cools, and squish it down with the other piece of cracker.

I like to give it a minute or two to make sure that the chocolate is nice and melty. These come out delicious and they're SO easy!

Thankful Thursday

I am slowly but surely getting back into this blogging thing. Hopefully I can get into a routine and make it more frequent. I think that by giving myself a topic to write about, I can get into the habit. So, I've decided to start doing Thankful Thursday after seeing it on a couple of other blogs. With all that has happened and is happening within Hubster's unit, I feel like I have a ton to be thankful for.

After being home for 15 amazing days, Hubster returned to Afghanistan yesterday. Although I was sad to see him go, I am thankful that he was able to come home for a short visit. I am thankful that Hubster is healthy and physically able to be in the Afghanland to do the job that he loves doing. I am thankful that unlike a couple of the unit wives, my husband is alive. I can still look forward to welcoming him home again in a couple months. It might not be very often, but I am still able to receive the occasional email or phone call.

Wordless Wednesday

Voluntary Bumbo Recall

Hello folks! I have a ton of updates and posts to make about Hubster's R&R and our cruise but I wanted to post this really quickly for those Bumbo owners out there.

A recall was announced today for Bumbo seats because of the possibility of children severely injuring themselves by wiggling out of the seat. Bumbo owners can go to http://www.recall.bumbousa.com/ to determine if their seat is on the recall list and order a repair kit.

Photo from Bumbo

The product subject to the recall can be identified in several ways:

• On the front of the seat in raised lettering is the word "Bumbo" with the image of an elephant on top.

• The bottom of the seat has the following words: "Manufactured by Bumbo South Africa Material: Polyurethane World Patent No. PCT: ZA/1999/00030." The back of the seat has several warnings, and seats manufactured since 2008 also have warnings on the front of the seat against use on raised surfaces.

The free repair kit includes a safety restraint which will have to be installed by the consumer as well as a new warning label which reemphasizes not to use your Bumbo on a raised surface.

We're Baaaack...!

Hubster and I got back from our cruise this morning. It was a truly sad moment. We were super excited to be back and able to snuggle up our girls.

The cruise was fantastic!! We both definitely needed the time to relax and SLEEP. There were a ton of highlights and a few negatives that I will touch on within the next week or so. For the next couple of days I'll be enjoying the time I have left with Hubs.

I apologize to those of you whose blogs I follow. I promise to come back to blog world once Hubs returns to Afghanland. 

Cruising!

I was up bright and early in anticipation of our cruise today. I had no problem falling asleep last night (especially after our amazing meal at Texas de Brazil) or staying asleep through the night but I was up bright and early this morning at 6. Loooong before Hubster or the girls were even up. Today begins Hubster and I's week long adventure in the Caribbean.

We are currently sitting at the port waiting for our zone to be called. We got here about an hour earlier than we did for our last cruise and check in was a breeze!! There was no waiting in line or anything. Very soon we'll be snapping pictures for our cards and munching on all the food we can handle. Hopefully the storms don't affect our trip at all.

If you'd like to see what we're up to on our vacation, follow me on twitter (@armywifemomlife) or instagram (@armywifemommylife)