Life's a Beach!

I apologize it's taken me 3 weeks to post pictures from our vacation of a lifetime. Normally it would be due to pure laziness on my part, but this time I actually have a pretty good excuse. If you haven't already heard Jeff and I will be expanding our ranks this summer, on 7/5/09 to be exact. Yes, you heard right, we're pregnant...or I am at least. Surprised?? We were a little too, but now we're nothing short of excited. And if I can just get through the nauseau/vomiting/all day miserable feeling of the first trimester, I'll really be golden. For the past 2 weeks most of my focus has been on not puking. Here is the current routine: 1. Get to work without puking 2. Get situated at my desk without puking 3. Get as much work done as possible without puking 4. Get back home without puking 4. Eat dinner, walk and go to bed (without puking). Some days I am successful, but it's still a big guessing game as to what sets the peaunut off at this point. And yes I did get some medicine last week, thank goodness, but it only worked really well for about 3 days. It's definitely still helping some, but I spent a large part of my day yesterday green at my desk, so unfortunately it's not a sure fix.

Anyway, we found out our exciting news the very day we left for our dream vacation. I took a test that morning "just to be safe," and voila! There is nothing romantic or sweet to report about my delivery of the news to Jeff either. I essentially crawled back into bed (at 6:30am in the morning, mind you) and stuck the "pee stick," as he calls it, in his face. Sweet right:) Part of the shock factor is due to the fact that although we were planning to start "trying" on our vacation, neither of us ever imagined it would happen this quickly. Don't get me wrong, we are NOT complaining. But it did take a few days for the "I can't believe we're actually pregnant!" shock to wear off. And if you ever need proof that it only takes one time of not being "careful" to get pregnant, well here you go. Enough said!

Okay onto our dream vacation - which by the way it really was just that. Thankfully I was only 5 weeks pregnant during the trip, and the sickness did not set in until the day we got back (week 6).

The flight to Miami was quite uneventful. We met up with our friends Amy and Michael on the rental car shuttle at the airport. You'd think transporting 4 adults, 2 kids and all of the associated gear would have been a real hassle, but it really wasn't that bad once we met up. Aside from the 1.5 hour wait at the rental car shop, everything else was a breeze.

It took us much longer than the 3 hours we'd anticipated to get to Key West. I think it took almost an hour just to get out of Miami. I was a little dissapointed with the drive (and very glad I didn't insist we drive the entire way). The pictures I've always had in my head of the Keys is of white sandy beaches and palm trees billowing in the wind - a tropical paradise. The real Keys is nothing like that. Oh the turqoise water is beautiful, but there are virtually no beaches, and the towns we drove through were all pretty dumpy, for lack of a better word. But it was still fun, and I'm glad we did it the way that we did.

Unbeknownst to us, we scheduled our arrival to Key West during the culmination of Fantasy Fest, which is a week long party somewhere between Mardi Gras and the Gay Pride Parade. We saw some pretty racy costumes leaving the grocery store that evening, but by the time we made it downtown, were seeing things I never want to see again. To be blunt - NAKED.PEOPLE.EVERYWHERE. I guess in Key West body paint is considered a form of clothing. Anyway, it was 9:30pm at this point, and we had a carful of groceries and 2 kids needing to go to bed. Come to find out, they shut all of the streets down on the island for the parade until midnight, so despite our best efforts we could not get to the hotel where the ferry was waiting to take us to the island. Obviously we couldn't wait until midnight with the kids, so we quickly came up with plan B. The boys drove us as close as they could to the hotel, loaded the stroller down with as many of the perishable groceries as we could fit, and Amy, Dawson, Bryce and I braved the masses to walk the last 12 blocks to the hotel/ferry. We got lots of nasty stares from all of the naked people, but managed to make it to the ferry unscathed. The picture below is a very tame example of what we saw. And the straps on that lady...if you look closely you can see they were painted on. So that was the most exciting thing that happened on our trip. The day we were leaving Jeff had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic he'd been on, and had red welts all over his body for 3 days. We figured if anyone asked, we'd just tell them he'd has a reaction to the body paint:)

The rest of the pictures pretty much speak for themselves. We stuck close to the island all week because it was essentially empty, and truly it's own little tropical paradise. It looked like what I thought the rest of the Keys would. We enjoyed beautiful sunsets, lazy afternoons on the beach, and lots of good food and fun with our friends. It was truly a week to remember! We drove back to Miami the last night of the trip, and met up with one of my old friends from Alaska, and her husband. A great way to end a great week!