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.

A Fairy Princess

SOOOOOOO sorry about that. I've been absent for about 3 weeks now. Radio silence. You all must know what that means...the babies are here!! I will be posting about that very very soon. As in, maybe tonight after Avery goes to bed and I can start writing. But in the meantime, I need to do a Halloween post, before it gets too far away.

Last year, Troy and Avery had coordinating outfits as Curious George and the Man in the Yellow Hat. You can read all about that here.

I looked back at that post and seriously, my heart was breaking. She is SO big and grown up now. And talking constantly, trying my patience. Thank you Jesus for making her cute because seriously, if she says "mommy" one more time I might kill her. This is my life right now:



Anyway.

For Christmas last year, her Aunt Taylor bought Avery a dress up box, but she wasn't really interested in it until about 2 months ago. Like, she lives in her Rapunzel dress. For us, it was a natural choice to let her pick things out of her dress up box to wear for Halloween. Oh yeah, and I was hugely pregnant and not really feeling like DIYing something cute or creative either. Pinterest mom of the year right here! And Caris came home from the hospital on oxygen 2 hours before Avery left to go trick or treating with Troy. We were ALLLLL about easy this year.

So Avery decided to wear her Rapunzel dress and fairy wings with her sparkly TOMs and be a fairy princess. And Troy wore his Uncle Si costume. He's getting good use out of that thing, huh? He said that more people were commenting on his costume while trick or treating and he felt a little guilty about stealing the spotlight from Her Royal Cuteness.

Here are the trick or treaters before they left. Avery was very excited because she got to wear makeup for the very first time! Grandma did a GREAT job with the eye shadow and blush :)

Here's a family photo (excuse the puffiness...I don't even look like myself...)

Here's a side view of Princess Avery's wings:

And here's one of Avery and me. Gosh, I love this girl. Even if she drives me nuts. Like I said...thank God she's cute.

Troy and Avery's After Bath Routine

Avery LOOOOVES bath time. And I'm convinced it's because she looks forward to this:



So thank you Aunt Kathy for the homemade kids towel...without which these nightly giggles would not be possible.

PS Please make 2 more. Please and Thank you.

Pregnancy and Peeing Rocks

Anyone who has been pregnant will be able to relate to this.

I am a desert creature. Like, I never drink water. Ever. I MAYBE drink 2 cups of coffee, have a soda, and a glass of water in a day. And that's kind of stretching it. I just don't required liquids. I'm never thirsty.

When I got pregnant with Avery, Troy was pushing fluids on me. Like huge. Constantly refilling my water. Making me chug a whole glass 1x every 30 minutes on weekends. He would stand there and stare at me while I finished it and immediately go and refill it. It was awful. I just felt so full all the time. And for whatever reason, I find going to the bathroom annoying and disruptive. I'm weird. I know.

Well, as a result of me working full time while I was pregnant, Troy only got the chance to chase me around with cups of water from 5-10pm on weekdays. Which ensured that he was making me drink about 6-8 glasses of water in 5 hours. Which equated to me getting up to pee ALL NIGHT LONG. Like 4-6 times a night.

Towards the end of my pregnancy, I could barely make it to the toilet before the pressure of the baby on my bladder would just push it out with so much force it kind of sounded like a water hose.

One night it was particularly bad. I had already been up to pee a couple of times and I got up again. Sure enough, there goes Troy's mouth again:

Troy: WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE!?!?!? PEEING ROCKS? Geez, it sounds like an avalanche. Could you be any louder?

Natalie: Are you kidding right now? You did this to me.

He didn't remember it the next day either.

I Got E.Coli

This is an appropriate post for today, seeing as I called out sick from work. I'm coughing up green and brown stuff and I have blisters in the back of my throat. I figured I shouldn't spread that around. But seriously...I hate being sick and I HATE calling out from work. It makes me feel unreliable and useless.

Troy and I got married in June of 2007. He went active duty in November of 2007 and reported to Dover. He went to logistics training school in Texas from the first week in January until the end of April. I was still in grad school and so I went to visit him in Texas for my spring break in March.

I was so excited to go visit and we were having a great week. We visited with Rob and Cynthia and did some San Antonio sightseeing on the Riverwalk. When he was in class during the day, I would go to the gym, watch movies, and hang out in the room. Sometimes Troy would come back for lunch and sometimes not.

This particular day, I had a PB & J sandwich for lunch by myself in the room. Troy felt bad and picked up a pizza on his way home and we had spinach salads for dinner. We ate picnic style on the floor of our hotel room and watched a movie.

I apparently did two no-nos that day. I ate peanut butter and spinach.

That night, around 2am, I woke up with HORRIBLE stomach and abdominal pains. I ended up in the bathroom SICK SICK SICK. So sorry for the mental image, but I was sitting on the toilet and throwing up in the trash can. I knew that Troy had to get up early the next morning at 5am for PT and I was trying to be quiet. But sometimes, when your insides are coming out of both ends, it's hard to be quiet.

I had been in the bathroom for about an hour when Troy stuck his head in the bathroom door and immediately pulled it back out. Traumatized, I'm sure.

Troy: Um, what's going on?

Natalie: I've been sick for about an hour.

Troy: I know. Can you keep in down in there? I have to get up soon.

Seriously...that happened. Never mind that we had been married less than a year and I was HORRIFIED that Troy had caught me in such a vulnerable and delicate position.

Troy ended up going to PT and class and leaving me sitting on the toilet. Don't worry...he changed the trash can bag for me. I sat there from about 2 am to 8 am. My legs had been asleep for about 4 hours.

Troy got permission to skip class for the rest of the day to take me to the ER. Let me tell you, throwing up in the waiting room of the ER 4 times is a quick ticket back to triage. They DO NOT want to keep cleaning up barf...or have people complaining about the smell and retching sound. I was seen almost immediately because I was throwing up 10+ times per hour.

The doctor told me that I had gotten it from the spinach or the peanut butter. So sad. It was definitely a test in our marriage. Troy has since learned to be nicer to me when I'm sick :)

Taking My (School) Work Home

I was fortunately enough to be able to complete my fieldwork placements for OT school in Delaware, where Troy was stationed, so that we could be together.

During my second fieldwork, I was working at an acute rehab facility. About halfway through my 3 months there, a man came in named Jesse and he was only 34 years old. He had a devastating stroke and lost function on the right side of his body. He had young kids at home and a super supportive wife. He was a mechanic. He was originally supposed to be there for 3 weeks, but he had been making such great gains, that his insurance kept approving him for more time.

My heart really went out for him and I was very motivated to read research and try new things. I felt like my mind was constantly at work and I was thinking about how to adapt things and teach him how to be more independent when I was home.

One night, I woke up to Troy yelling at me...I was doing something crazy again.

Jesse was having crazy emerging tone in his shoulder, elbow, and wrist.

I had decided that I was going to do some range of motion on Jesse in the middle of the night and stretch out his upper body. And Troy was not so cool with that.

I literally woke up kneeling on the edge of the bed with Troy on his back and me ranging Troy's shoulder.

It was a little jarring. Troy thought I was craaaaaazy. Crazy dedicated. I came out of it immediately and was like "sorry, I thought you were someone else." Oh, ya think??

He said it had been going on for about 2 minutes before he was able to wake me. He always worries that I'll have post traumatic stress from a "sleep walking" incident if he wakes me up. So far so good.

Troy Punched Me. Twice.

You read that right.

This is completely innocent. Really.

Troy and I read in bed every night. 99% of the time I am reading for about 30 minutes to an hour after he is done and he is falling asleep next to me.

I'm not really sure how common this is for other people, but Troy is a twitcher. Like, when he is falling asleep, his WHOLE body jerks a little bit. I have been told that people who are really active (or a runner, like Troy) have the twitches when they fall asleep because it's their body's way of "calming down." Troy does it REALLY bad when he's particularly exhausted.

One night, I was reading on my back with my book resting on my chest and Troy was snuggled up to my shoulder on his side facing me. He had his hands up by his face. All of a sudden his right elbow twitches and goes into extension...RIGHT INTO MY FACE.

Natalie: DAMN IT TROY!!!

Troy: Huh, what?

Natalie: YOU PUNCHED ME RIGHT IN THE FACE!

Troy: Huh? Sorry, I love you.

Troy settles back in and I rub my jaw, but keep on reading. Sure enough, ten minutes later...

WHACK!! Right in the jaw.

Natalie: YOU ASS! WAKE UP AND FACE THE OTHER WAY!

Troy: Huh? Baby, I love you so much.

Natalie: NO! Don't try and snuggle me. You'll just kick me next time.

Troy: You are so mean.

Natalie: YOU punched ME!

Troy rolls over. And falls back asleep.

He doesn't remember ANY of this in the morning...

Anyone else have a twitchy spouse while they fall asleep? Anyone?

Troy Peed In My Purse

You read that right.

Troy and I had been married for less than 6 months. We got married in June of 2007 and he didn't go active duty until November. I was in my first year of grad school and had signed a lease to live with 2 roommates before we had even gotten engaged. SO Troy and I lived with 2 roommates our first 6 months we were married in a tiny apartment with 1 bathroom in downtown Harrisonburg, Virginia. It was AWESOME. I LOVE LOVE LOVED that apartment.

I'm pretty sure the night before was really low key. We had gone out to dinner with some friends and come home and had game night or something. Aka...this occurred and NO alcohol was involved. This is an important detail to mention because the next morning, I got up and wanted to upload my pictures from the night before off my digital camera onto my computer. For some reason, I had dropped my purse (it was smaller) into a giant tote bag that I used for school/gym/whatever when we got home the night before. It was a GIANT canvas tote bag.

I reached into the giant tote bag and started to sift through the contents of my purse and my hand was wet when I pulled my camera out. My camera had liquid dripping out of it. I looked up at the ceiling to see if it was leaking. Nothing. My bag was RIGHT underneath the wall of windows in my room so I looked to see if it was open/leaking. Nothing. I checked to see if my tote bag had an open water bottle in it. Nothing.

Now that I know it was pee, I am dreading writing this next part...

I lifted my purse out of the tote bag and started emptying the contents onto the floor so that I could separate them to dry out. I set everything on a towel and took the battery/memory card out of my camera. I took all of the cards and money out of my wallet. And I started SMELLING everything. Trying to figure out what had possibly ruined my camera and wallet.

Troy heard me shuffling around and woke up asking me what I was doing.

Troy: Babe, what are doing?

Natalie: I have water all over the inside of my school bag. I set my purse in there last night and everything is SOAKING wet.

Troy: That's weird...

Natalie: Nothing is leaking the the floor all around my bag is soaked and I'm gonna be pissed if my camera doesn't work anymore.

A few hours go by and one of our roommates, gets up and sees the contents of my purse drying on the floor.

Curt: What are you doing?

Natalie: My purse is soaked and I have NO idea what happened.

Curt: Really...hmm. Where is Troy's bathroom at home? Or in his last apartment?

Natalie: What do you mean?

Curt: Like in relation to his bed. Where is the bathroom?

(I gesture and explain)

Curt: Well there were some guys in my dorm freshman year who would get up in the middle of the night, kind of sleep walking, and they would walk to where their bathroom was at home and just pee wherever they wound up.

He gave me a moment to let it sink in.

Curt: Apparently guys get disoriented and aren't all the way awake and just pee where they think their bathroom is.

Troy is listening.

Troy: Oh no. There were a couple guys who did that in my dorm freshman year. One guy actually lifted the screen on his roommates laptop, like a toilet seat, and peed right onto the keys. Another guy peed into his laundry hamper...

Natalie: OMG. Are you saying that THIS IS PEE???

Curt says nothing both of the guys and start laughing.

Troy confirmed that this scenario is a real possibility. He thinks about it for a few hours and says that it's very very likely that this is what happened.

Troy peed in my purse, thinking it was his toilet at his apartment from college...my bag was located in the EXACT same spot as the relationship from his bed to the bathroom.

And that's how my very first digital camera was ruined. So sad...

Troy Drunk Dialed My Parents...More than Once

We are in the midst of a series about "Middle of the Night Weirdness that Doesn't Include Sleeping, or THAT."

You can read about me seeing a ghost here.

This one includes a drunk dial to my parents. When we were in college, Troy made the grave mistake of putting my name in his phone with 2 categories underneath my name and he had to select which number he wanted to call.

1. My house phone
2. My cell phone

There were several instances where Troy accidentally called my parents (aka my house phone) on a friday or saturday night between 0100 and 0500 in the morning. Waking up my parents and resulting in some VEEERY awkward conversations. It's an honest mistake, really.

Troy and I would go out with our friends and whenever we got home, we would call each other before bed on weekends.

These awkward call-Natalie's-parents-instead-of-Natalie happened about a 2-3 times in one school year. My poor parents. Luckily for Troy, they didn't mind too much and they still laugh about it now.

*ring ring, ring ring*

My stepdad: hello?

(no mind that a man answered the phone, Troy didn't notice)

Troy: Hey baby, I love you so much. I miss you. I wish I was there.

My stepdad: Troy...

Troy: Natalie?

My stepdad: Troy.

Troy: Who is this?

My stepdad: You did it again.

Troy: Ooooh sorry. How are you?

My stepdad: We're sleeping. It's 0427 am.

Troy: Ooooh sorry.

My stepdad: Be safe. Have fun. Talk to you later.

Troy: Ooooh sorry, sir. Have a good night.

Needless to say, after this happened about 3 times, Troy deleted my parents phone number COMPLETELY out of his phone. When was hilarious because sometimes he'd need to call them (because who memorizes phone numbers anymore when you have a cell phone) and he would call me to give him they're phone number. You know, because he deleted it to avoid an awkward drunk dial with my parents. Again.

The good news is, they LOVE him and gave him their blessing when he wanted to marry me :) I got me a winner.

Things that Happen While We're Sleeping...NOT THAT!

Seeing as it is the week of Valentine's Day, I thought we could re-live some of the sweet things that have happened between Troy and me during our dating history/marriage. So, I sat down with Troy to start brainstorming, and here's the thing: We couldn't come up with anything blog-worthy. Fortunately for you all, we came up with plenty of things that happened that were ridiculous. The funny thing is, they ALL HAPPENED at night. When one or both of us should have been sleeping. Get your mind out of the gutter.

So we came up with the 10 things that happened at night, NOT involving sleeping. They're in chronological order, so the first event occurred when we were in college, the first year I lived off campus in an apartment.

Troy had come to visit me for the weekend and we had had a low key evening. We went to bed like normal and went to sleep. I also have to mention that this story is COMPLETELY told to me by Troy. I don't remember ANYTHING because I was sleeping. Even the next morning...I got nothing. Troy says that I talk in my sleep all the time, but this was one of the weirder/freakier times.

Troy says that everything was fine, and all was quiet in the apartment. He woke up because he had a "weird feeling." He noticed that I was sitting up in bed, awake (meaning my eyes were open) and I was staring across the room, above the closed door of my bedroom.

Troy: (talking in a normal voice) Natalie, what's wrong? Are you okay?

Natalie: (whispering) Shhhhhhhh

Troy: Do you have a headache?

Natalie: Shhhhhh. She'll hear you.

Troy: WHAT?! Who?

Natalie: The girl.

Troy: WHAT GIRL!?!? What are you talking about??

Natalie: There's a girl in the doorway. She's watching us. Shhhhh.

Troy: WHAT IS GOING ON? Are you okay? There's no one there. Stop.

Natalie: (suddenly loses the glazed look in eye and looks over at Troy) Huh? What are you talking about? Night night.

Troy was left sitting up in bed, completely freaked out that I had just been used as a medium in my apartment. He couldn't fall back asleep. I have no recollection of this, but every once in a while, we will be settling into bed, reading or whatever, and Troy will go, "there's a girl in the door." I jump about 6 inches off the mattress every time. Jerk.