We Went on a Cruise - BY OURSELVES

Yep, you read that right. The last time Troy and I went on vacation by ourselves was in June of 2010. Troy had just come home from a deployment and we went on a 1 week all inclusive trip to Cancun. And then I got pregnant with Avery in the September.

And then we had a 5 year vacation drought. Which we FINALLY ended this year. Thank you Jesus. It was just so needed. I wish I could tell you that we partied hard. And stayed up all night. And acted like we were in college.

Lets play a game called truths and a lie. You guess which one is the lie.

1. We went to bed the first night at 8pm and slept a solid 14 hours.
2. We ordered room service for breakfast every day and hung out in our room like homebodies. Eating in bed. Reading. Dozing until 10am.
3. We napped almost every day for 2-3 hours.

If you guessed they were all true, you are right. Seriously, we were lame. And by lame, I mean, awesome. Awesome at catching up on all the sleep we missed for 5 years. In addition, when we were hanging out by the pool during the day, we were sleeping. Or reading. Or eating. It was SO necessary.

I'm serious. If you have not gone into vacation being like, "My goal is to be as rested as possible at the end of this trip," you haven't lived.

People who say, "you can sleep when you're dead" haven't ever had a baby. Or twins. Or just been really mentally exhausted. Because tired.

Anyway. How did we achieve this feat? My mom and stepdad flew out to Vegas to handle the hooligans for us.

We drove to Longbeach, California and first things first. We went to Chick-Fil-A. Seriously. And then we got on the boat. And promptly fell asleep. Just kidding. We had a couple cocktails and stumbled to formal dinner first. Then we fell asleep. Not kidding. See above.

In addition, does anyone remember that post I wrote about 18 months ago (<<<<----click there for before pics)? About needing to lose weight? Well, I fell off the blogging bandwagon and continued to lose weight. Troy snapped this picture without me knowing and I found it while going through vacation pictures. Mom body = awesome. I'll take it. Even if it is an unflattering picture of my face.

This is Troy's best Zoolander face.

It was a 7 day cruise (7 DAYS WITHOUT KIDS!!!!) and we went to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas.

We did excursions in all 3 places. In Puerto Vallarta, we paid to go to a resort on the beach to sleep.

Kidding. Not really. We took a bus to a resort with this amazeballs pool where you could climb up a tower thing into this crocodile and slide down the tail into the belly out the mouth into the pool. Our pass to the resort also included a buffet lunch and all you could drink and pool. Yes, please. Needless to say, Troy and I grabbed a cabana, drank, slept and read for a while. Went and had lunch and drank some more.

Here's the slide. Awesome, right?

By then we were sliding down the alligator like 4 year olds. Okay, I was. Yelling. I think the resort staff was relieved when the bus pulled away. When we left, there was a cage with a tiger inside located outside the main entrance of the resort. Troy IMMEDIATELY yelled to the bus tour guide, "YOU COULDN'T TELL US THERE WERE TIGERS HERE EARILER??" Woah, buddy. It's not that serious.

The weather was definitely the nicest in Mazatlan, but it was definitely the scariest port. If you go on this cruise, do an excursion so you don't get taken, Liam Neesan style from the port. Seriously. We also took tequila shots here. Here are our post tequila shot grimaces.

This was the best exclusion we went on, in my opinion. We got on a bus and they took us to a smaller port. We got on a catamaran and took a ride to a place called Deer Island. There were no deer. We did a kayak trip around the island. Which was gorgeous. And Troy did most of the work, so I just got to relax. And sleep. Just kidding.

After the kayaking, there was lunch and a bar setup for relaxing on the beach. Which was GORGEOUS. The weather was beautiful and the island is deserted except for the people on the excursion. It was awesome. And I took ZERO pictures. Just in my brain. Then we took the catamaran back to Mazatlan and the bus back to the port. Which was scary. Don't even get off the boat if you don't go on an excursion in Mazatlan.

Cabo was the prettiest, most tourist friendly port. They also had the tethers. You actually got on a little boat from the cruise ship to go into the port. Which was fun.

We went horseback riding on the beach. We took a bus to a farm kind of place with horses and ATVs. So our bus had two different excursions on it. Troy got the good horse. There was an area of flat beach where if you could get your horse to listen to you, you were allowed to RUN. Troy got his horse to run. Mine wouldn't listen.

We didn't have on helmets or anything, but this was Troy's theory:

Those horses were super trained to look at the horses butt in front of them. If you tried to steer them away from the horse's butt in front on them, they were physically agitated. By telling people that you could run your horse on the beach, it implied you had to have enough riding experience and knowledge of horse handling that you could command your house to listen. They figure, if you can get your house to actually listen to you, you're probably experienced enough to be on a horse while it's running. Well. I guess I suck then. And Troy is awesome.

Anyways. We had a really good time. But the weather was pretty terrible. It rained while we were horseback riding. The storm on the beach was beautiful though.

We had a great time dressing up for dinners. I actually got to wear some nice clothes. And escape the mom yoga pants! My one regret is that we didn't buy more pictures. We had a great time every night looking through the photo galleries for our pictures and then taking more in their set ups.

Here are a couple of our photos:

This are the only 2 that we purchased, but like I said, I wish we had bought more. Next time ;)

Our review of the cruise:

We had a great time. We'd go again. It was perfect timing. However - if we go again, we want to go with friends or family. It is a great set up that you can spend time alone with your "person" or with a group and there are many activities that are group oriented and fun. Like "Harry Potter trivia"(yep, we did that) or the amazing comedy lounge (yep, we were there every night), or formal dinners. I'm looking at you Dan and Laura.

Overall, a big thumbs up.

Operation "Stop Eating Anything/Everything and Laying Around Nursing and then Expecting to Lose Weight"

Here we go guys. It. Is. On.

I decided to do this post after reading this post, written by my friend Ashley at Coffee, Cake, and Cardio. Could blogging about my eating habits and HATING exercise actually help me lose the baby weight?

Troy renewed our gym membership on thursday, February 13. We let it expire in October because we knew the kids would be born soon-ish (October 23) and the YMCA doesn't allow children in childcare until they are 3 months old. They will be 4 months next week and I went to the gym to exercise (rather than swim over the summer) for the first time since April of 2013. That is serious. It had been a LOOOONG time since working out.

Before I BLEW up and gained 31 pounds in 4 days from the ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, resulting in a paracentesis, where 5 liters of fluid were removed from my abdomen last March, I weighed 140 lbs. After that was resolved, my weight went back down to 146 when I found out I was pregnant. I got up to 192 while pregnant with the babies. So technically, I gained 52 lbs. I lost a bunch of it REALLY quick. Like within 2 weeks I was back down to 160. I weighed myself this morning and I am currently at 154. If you do the weight, I've only lost 6 lbs in 3 months. That's pretty bad considering the calorie output I'm getting with nursing these 2 hippos and being on my feet all day at work.

So in summary:

Pre-baby weight - 140
Last weight before delivering - 192
Current weight - 154

When I was losing weight from having Avery, it just MELTED off. The 140lbs is actually 10 lbs BELOW my pre-pregnancy weight with Avery. I was 150 when I got pregnant with her. Nursing is THE ONLY thing I did to lose weight. I ate normally with no dieting and was in smaller sizes by the time she was 2 months old.

THIS time, I was like, YEEEEEES NURSING IS AWESOME and I am going to lose so much weight nursing twins!! And I TOTALLY took advantage and have been eating whatever, whenever I feel like it. I figured that this is the only time that I'll be able to eat like this and not gain weight. Well, the jokes on me. Apparently, you can't eat an entire tray of Ghirardelli brownies and expect to lose weight. Or half a roll of cookie dough. Or an entire box of girl scout cookies. Or half of a pizza. It's a problem. And when I am making healthy choices (ie, dinner), I eat more than 1 serving of everything.

So, without further ado, my post baby body: Day 1 of Operation "Stop Eating Anything/Everything and Laying Around Nursing and then Expecting to Lose Weight"

AHHH MY EYES! It's winter. I need a tan. A couple weeks with the pool will change that.

It's actually not toooooooo bad. I made it out good without stretch marks. I definitely am NOT sucking it in or tightening it up. It looks a little better when I do. Not so much here though.

You can definitely tell this body was made for comfort and not speed. Holding and snuggling babies and not exercise.

So I went to the gym today and took Avery to play in childcare while Troy stayed home with the babies. I almost died. I was on the elliptical, which is normally what I do when I'm being lazy. It is the best place to burn calories and read. I just wanted to go and get into the swing of things, but again, the jokes on me. That's what I get for not exercising for almost a year. Eek.

I VOW TO:

1. Stop eating cookie dough out of the container
2. Exercise 3 times a week
3. Drink 100+ oz of water a day
4. Stop having 3 servings of dinner

I'll keep y'all updated. Sorry if I blinded you with my mushy, white body. That will change. Hopefully sooner rather than later. But you know what they say: 9 months to put it on. Give yourself at least 9 months to take it off. Or more. Whatever. I guess that means I have at least 5 more months.

Only 25% of my clothes fit and I refuse to buy a new summer wardrobe. This is Vegas. It's summer 9 months out the year. It's a problem. I really really need my clothes to fit.