Autumn Cruise Vacation Part 2: CRUISE DAY 1

We left early Monday morning (Oct. 12th) stopping to fill up gas and grab some Starbucks carmel apple spice and hot chocolate. We drove to San Diego and followed the GPS Dustin’s parents let us borrow, but was kinda weird. We parked at a Park and Ride and were shuttled to our big boat. We didn’t have any tags on our luggage and for some reason did not know where to get them, so we brought all our suitcases and everything into the check in because that’s where we thought we needed to go… after going through security and all that, we found out that you were supposed to drop them off before even entering the building, so we were stuck with EVERYTHING and couldn’t put them into our rooms for another hour… oops. Made it a little crazier for when we got on the boat and EVERYONE was there getting some lunch. Dustin stayed with the luggage while I grabbed some food, then I stayed with the luggage while he some food. I felt a little retarded, but whatever. It was kinda fun playing “spot the Mormons” while watching everyone run around the Lido deck to get lunch. Ha ha ha. I guess we’re pretty easy to spot.

Finally 1:30 rolled around and we were able to put our luggage in our room and unpack in our little home for the next 4 days. I thought our cabin was pretty spacious actually… much bigger than my first cruise. We were at the front of the boat and had 2 port hole windows that were pretty cool. After unpacking and relaxing, we wanted to explore a little, so we did. We found that our ship had a water slide (which Dustin really liked) and a mini golf course which was pretty cool. Before long we had our little lifeboat drill so we grabbed our life jackets and headed to the Mikado Lounge (their big theater) because that was our muster station. I thought it was weird that we met inside instead of outside…. But when everyone was ready, we got to go outside to the lifeboats… which were on deck 8 and are a LONG way down to the ocean…. Not quite sure how they lower them full of people, but it really was a long way down!
After putting of life jackets away, we went to the Lido deck to say goodbye to San Diego as we left the port and headed out to the open sea. Our dinner was the late seating, which I wasn’t happy about at first, but then we realized we could eat TWO dinners, one early in the buffets, and then the nice seated dinner. Ha ha ha. Constantly eating on the cruise… best part ever. Hahaha. It turned out that the later dinner was a good thing anyway because we got to make friends with a nice young married couple from Riverside, CA named Ryan and Nicole, only 21 and already married for a year…. Not your typical out of Utah scenario. :)
The first day for dinner we ate a LOT. I was SO FULL….so full that after dinner, pretty sure we went to our cabin and laid there dead. I couldn’t move. Dustin couldn’t move. So that ended our day 1.

Autumn Cruise Vacation Part 1: Let's Start at the Very Beginning

So… we’ve been back from our trip for a week now and it was wonderful! I’m breaking the trip story up into smaller parts so that I can find time to just do a little at time :) So if you’re reading these all, you’ll have to start here and work your way back up.

We left Saturday October 10th and headed off to Vegas. We checked into our hotel, which was the South Pointe Hotel and Casino, which is a ways off the strip, which was kinda nice… Except the lady trying to check us in couldn’t pull up our reservation. Good thing Expedia sends hotel confirmation numbers. After checking into our room and finding that we had the best view in the hotel (please see pic. below), we changed into BYU garb and headed off for the game!

Traffic was a little crazy, but not too bad. We took some “secret” back roads (they had signs that led us that way) and ended up getting into the parking lot from the backside… and no one was there to take money or anything, so parking was free! Which we thought was great. We got our Rebel dogs for dinner and found our seats… which were RIGHT BEHIND two rows of Max Hall’s family… seriously, his mom was right in front of us. Max looks a lot like his mom… and his little brother looks just like him too, sticking out ears and everything. The game was SO MUCH FUN. Like seriously, I think that was the most fun I’ve ever had at a game! I don’t know if it was the fact that there were more BYU fans there than Rebels fans, or if it was that UNLV returned a kickoff for a touchdown which meant that EVERYONE in the stadium got free chicken, the fantastic win we had, or maybe it was just that we were on vacation, but it was SO FUN. Loved it.
We went back to our hotel and got some real dinner food at the Coronado Café where BYU fans trickled in, which was fun to see. The next day we checked out and went to a single’s ward with Curtis Millette, Dustin’s mission buddy. It was weird being in a singles ward…even just to visit. And you know what, I was able to go to Relief Society for the first time in a WHILE since I’m in Primary all the time now… and I got BOO’d. That’s right. I said I went to the BYU UNLV game and I was boo’d by one girl and told to go back to Utah. Such a poor sport… just because we kicked their trash. Meh.
After church, we went to Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers to get our FREE CHICKEN from the game. It was just a kid’s meal, but it was pretty dang good...and it was FREE, which made it even better. Then we went down to the strip with Millette to check out the Bellagio gardens (I’ve never been there in the fall, I really liked it), watch a couple fountain shows, and get some divine dessert crepes inside Paris.
That was the end of our Vegas stay, so we headed down to Primm. Oh yes, we stayed at Buffalo Bills. They were able to easily find our reservation, gave us our room keys… we went up the 6 floors… and found someone else’s stuff there… Seriously, I was tired and knew we were waking up early the next morning so I was a little upset. We went back to the front desk, explained our dilemma, and was given a new room. This one was safe… yes, we walked in and found our 2 queen beds. Ha ha ha. I showed Dustin which one was his. Ha ha ha. Definitely not our favorite hotel we’ve ever stayed at, but hey, for $18, you too could have 2 queen beds and a moldy bathroom. :)

Friday on My Mind

Seriously, I wish I could just skip over today and go straight to Friday.... I am so ready to go on vacation! There is still a lot to do at home to get everything ready, but I just want to skip today and make it Friday. At home I have laundry to do, get packed, clean the house and the fridge, finish getting lesson plans together for my piano subs, and do some reg cards which I might not ever think about until I get back. I don't want to teach piano tonight, I want to work on everything else I need to do! And then I just want to leave.... go vacation... and never come back... live in complete cruise bliss forever and ever. Ha ha ha. It will definitely be a nice break. SO EXCITED!

There is work enough to do

I'm wishful thinking but....

What I would do if I didn't work a lot:

• Write in my blog, update it, add all sorts of cute pictures like of our house and what we've been doing....
• Write in my journal... because it barely even knows I'm married
• Scrapbook. I am WAY behind.
• Decorate my house some more. We even have decorations ready, I just need to put them up.
• Clean.... Organize....
• Cook good healthy meals every single night.
• Call all my friends and make sure their lives are going splendidly well.
• Make fun surprises for my husband.
• Do my hair. Ha ha ha, but seriously....
• EXERCISE every day for at least a half hour a day. And love it.
• Plan fun cheap dates and trips.
• Come up with new recipes and try them out.

The list could go on but that's all I can think of during this short lunch break. What would YOU do?

Home Alone

Dustin is Young Men's Secretary... and young men go on campouts. Dustin found out there was a campout on Wednesday... and then decided Thursday that he would go... So here I am, on Friday, home alone for the first time in my married life. Today was a CRAZY day at work. Things were going wrong with the database, lots of work still to do, problems with payments, and a million tickets I received in my inbox. It felt like a Monday more than a Friday. Added on top was the dreaded knowledge that I would see Dustin for maybe 5 mins. today... I'm so much happier when I get to see him. So by 4:45, I was SO ready to leave work, despite the huge workload that awaits me on Monday. I just wanted to see Dustin before he was gone at 5.
I picked Dustin up and dropped him off at the church. Then I came home and cried a litte. That's right, i cried. I missed him already. We've never had to spend a night apart for the past like forever. And Weds and Thursdays we don't see each other much anyway between work, school, and piano... so Fridays are our days to reconnect and see each other, spend quality time together... and here I was alone on a Friday. Really, I was am sad! So I decided I should make a date with myself and go out to dinner to Cafe Rio with a peanut butter chocolate Reeces shake from Iceberg.... yeah, i treat myself right. ;) I came home to watch some high quality TLC and FoodNetwork. I did a little scan prep and wrote a couple wedding thank yous, then back to Say Yes to the Dress and Unwrapped. I got to have a nice chat with Andrea while eating ice cream, and Nicole also came over to visit and bring her new puppy, which, and I DON'T LIKE DOGS, but her puppy is SUPER cute and cuddly. I hear Momma Creer even calls the puppy her grandbaby. Ha ha, maybe she's trying to get used to that title, though I have no announcements. :)
I think I'll go to bed pretty soon because I do have to get up tomorrow morning and teach piano. I don't know how i'll sleep tonight without Dustin. I really do miss him and I might not let him leave again. ha ha ha. Next time I'll just need to have more prep time to get some girls together for a fun-filled girls night instead of one day.
I miss him a lot.

Money

Yesterday we got to celebrate our 6 month anniversary!!! We've been married for SIX MONTHS!!! Can you believe it? Time has gone by super fast... and yet 6 months seems like a long time... We feel as though we've been married forever, but our wedding was like just yesterday. Such different feelings, but so good! We got to celebrate by going out to eat at the Chef's Table. I haven't been there since senior year prom in high school and it was SO GOOD!! Way better than it was at Prom! ha ha ... Pretty sure life now is way better than it was at Prom! It was a fun little splurging trip and now we'll be saving more than ever and cutting back as we get ready for our cruise (which is in 27 days...) and just life in general.

It's crazy how fast money can go... especially when Dustin isn't working very much because he's taking 22 credits... yeah, it's madness I tell you. We decided we'd try to be poor and start eating top ramen and macaroni and cheese and stuff like that. Do you know how much money we could save that way?!? SO MUCH!! That would be nice. We had dinner over at Nathan and Adrienne's house on Sunday and they have a goal to save $50,000 by the time they graduate... holy cow! That has to take major self control to be able to save that much!! I want to be as cool as that and try to really really save lots of money... isnt' that a fabulous idea?! Some day we'll have loads of money, but for now, we'll try to save save save and good things will happen!

Plus, if we start eating crappy food then the cruise food will taste even MORE amazing, right? It's basically a great idea! :)

Take me out to the ballgame!

30 days. The Countdown begins. We are super excited for our Baja Mexico cruise!!! Seriously can't wait.

I've also been able to decorate the house a little more. Wahoo.

And now we must go to the last Owlz game of the season.

Life is good.