Brief, but oh so beautiful...

Oh, vacation. The short-term bliss. A whole week to hold hands with my husband and talk about something else besides work and the kids and how we need a new washer. Our first cruise, but not our last. We consider ourselves cruise converts.

Jamaica has a wonderful waterfall to climb. And drug dealers on every corner (we got offered pot at least eight times). That's what you get from a country that has replaced God with Bob Marley.



Grand Cayman has a place where you can feed sting rays (which is much scarier when you think about the Crocodile Hunter. It is always unnerving when fearless people die from the things they did not fear).


And a sunken ship off the coast which was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. We saw fishes like these:


Cozumel is a great place to rent a yellow bug and cruise around in cheap sunglasses.

And to do stupid things like hop into a boat with some locals to try parasailing. I swear that it was much scarier than the stingrays. It didn't help that I speak Spanish and understood the answer to our question of "How often do you have accidents?" I was not impressed with their percentage rate. But there was something sort of awesome about flying 600 feet in the air.


In the Bahamas, we sat in the white sand and read cheap paperbacks. It was perfect.

And on the boat, we ate. Our ship had around 4,000 people on it (if it was at full capacity) including passengers and staff. They prepare 20,000 meals a day. Yep, an average of five meals per person. And I hate to admit that we didn't help that average any. But it was SO fun to be able to eat things that I didn't cook. To have prosciutto for breakfast and lobster for dinner. Exotic fruits. The midnight pizza bar. Two desserts. My pregnant body misses all the variety very, very much.


But then we had to come back. And the minute we stepped in the door, Matt had to leave to go to the church to clean-up chairs. And we were out of milk. And we can't afford prosciutto. But it was such a blast to live like the rich and famous for a week--especially admist so much uncertainty.