favorite things from April - better late than never

Well its hard to remember for sure what my favorite things in April were as it was so long ago. So i will do my best to come up with a few highlights.

1. Going on a great cruise and feeling the sun on my face. It being warm and being beautiful did enough to life my spirits alone, but add in the amazing food and then I'm in heaven.

2. netflixs. I love being able to plug in a movie and escape life for a few hours at a time. Even those dumb "B" rated movies make me smile.

3. The weather in Wisconsin started to get nice which allowed for more walking after work. Buddy liked this as well as he was a restless pup over the winter months when it allowed for no outdoor time.

OK guess i can only come up with 3 right now due to the fact that April was forever ago. I will do better with May i promise

This Month a bust

So we were going to try to do a couple of months of IUI however this month is a bust as i'm ovulating on the wrong side. $430 down the drain just to tell me that my body sucks!! I'm just so tired of everything i feel like i could sleep away the rest of the month and be happy.

Medical Bills

I'm so sick of medical bills that just keep coming in. We have spent around $3,000 just trying to do all the testing required before we can more forward. That is 3 grand that we now don't have in our pockets to pay to actually have the child and really the results from the tests were often the same information. Why couldn't we start with the MRI which was the most expensive and find our about my unicorn and just be done with that? No we had to have multiple internal ultrasounds, one xray test,another internal with bubbles, and then a MRI all to come to the same conclusion that i only have 1 tube.

John are I are going to do a couple of rounds of IUI because at this current point in time we can't afford the IVF cycle although if the IUI doesn't take, we probably will have to but things on hold for a while ( don't even want to think about how long) before we can afford the IVF.

I wish things were not so expensive. Looks like our life is going to be sitting at home never going out as we just can not afford to do anything. We have to count all of our pennies, ugh!

OUR CRUISE - THE FINAL DAYS 5 AND 6

The last day at sea, as we headed back to port, was relaxing. We had already got sunburned to the point of a few blisters, so we tried to spend much of the day reading in various shady locations. Its weird to think that in a couple of days we would be back in Wisconsin, and in a few more back at work. The trip was exactly what we needed as a couple. It will give us the energy to continue on our journey.

Beyond reading, we spent much of the day at various shows or learning about the process of getting off of the ship. It turns out that we have options in terms of getting off. Not good options mind you, but having options is a good thing. Our options were to get off and carry our bags, or have the bags taken off for us. You get to get off first if you take the bags off yourself, but by first I mean about 8 am. When we were still on vacation, we didn’t feel like waking up at 7 am just to hurry into a 17 hour drive. Since we chose to have our bags taken off for us that meant we needed to have all of our things packed and left outside our room tonight.

As we packed our closets and drawers into our bags, we realized that we packed a bit too much. Out of our two suitcases, we could almost full one complete one with clothes we didn’t wear. We finished out the night by going to an adult comedy act. It was not that funny, but we didn’t expect much.

We went to bed, but couldn’t fall asleep. It was a mix of not wanting vacation to be over and excitement for getting to see our pets as well as sleep in our own bed. As we drifted to sleep, it was easy to see that we had a great trip, but were ready to go home.

Day 6

Lines. Lets take a step back to day 1 for a moment. As we boarded the ship, there was line after line after line and we didn’t think much of it. The ship was late getting into port, so we figured that was the cause for the current delays. There was a line to get into the parking garage that took about 45 minutes. After we got in, there was a line of about 35 minutes to get through the metal detector. And just when you felt you were done with lines, you rounded a bend to the biggest line yet, check in. That line probably took us over an hour to navigate through. And even after checking in, there was a wait to get our rooms, and long lines at some of the buffets.

Back to present day 6. Our choice of embarking should have allowed for an easy transition to land. Each deck gets to get off, and then all the people who didn’t carry there own bags off are broken up into 25 different groups and then let go a few at a time. Somehow, it didn’t work like magic as you would have hoped. We got to wait for a couple hours until they called our number, only to wait in another 45 minute line to get off the ship. It seemed like every time you rounded the corner, you found another line, 5 times as long as the one you just finally got through. After getting off the ship, we found a long line to get our luggage, and even longer to go through customs.

I didn’t realize that we would need to go through customs, as we left from an America port, and returned to that same port. It makes some sense, as perhaps some people sell their ID to a friendly Mexican and live out their days on the beaches of Cozumel. Come to think of it, going back to 50 degree rainy Wisconsin weather, perhaps we should have given that a little more thought.

Luckily, after getting through customs, there were almost no lines to get out of the parking lot. Its something to be said that when you end up waiting like 7 hours to get off, no one else is left in the area. Being on the road was a relaxing place after feeling like cattle. We decided to take a different way home, with the hopes of more gas stops and chances to see civilization. In the end it was a bad move, as more cities also meant far more road construction. Despite the construction, we made a great time on the drive, and got home at about 3:30 AM. There is no place like home, there is no place like home, there is no place like home. Actually, there is no place like your own bed, and pillows, and kitties. As we are ready to sleep for a good 24 hours, we are excited to see what our next vacation brings, and who knows, perhaps our lives will be even more exciting by that point.

OUR CRUISE - DAY 4

I woke up at about 6 this morning.I’m not sure if it was excitement or nervousness, but It was impossible to fall back asleep. As soon as Kristy woke up (2 hours later), we got got ready for the day. One of the benefits of getting up that early, is that you can get breakfast in the dining room. As it turns out, as we got ready for breakfast, we realized that we had not docked yet. It was interesting to watch the dock. It turns out that on each side of the ship, there is a captain’s bridge that extends out to allow him to see everything.

Well, that was great to see, it made our breakfast a little more stressful then we planned. Now as we went into breakfast, we did not know it, but it was probably a bad day to do that. Our excursion was planned to leave at 930 am, and we got to breakfast at 840. That seemed like a good time to eat and get down to the excursion. As the clock went to 9:00 without our food coming, we realized that despite the lightning fast speed of dinner, the breakfast crew was going at about 3 miles an hour. We ended up getting our food with about 5 minutes to chow down before heading for. Kristy got a chance to see how it feels to be me and eat so fast you barely taste it.

As we got off the ship, it was neat to see all the shops. We made it to our excursion with time to spare as apparently we weren’t the only ones that didn’t realize breakfast was an all day kinda meal. Our excursion began with a boat ride down the coast for about 45 minutes. The boat was fairly packed, but beyond that, it was pretty to see all the clear blue water. The boat took us to a Mexican “national park”. I use the quotes only because us Wisconsin-ers hear national park, and think of lots of trees and perhaps mountains or lakes. This instead was about a mile long excluded beach. The crystal blue water crashed into the white sand and made it look like a little piece of heaven.

Our first activity was snorkeling. Having went scuba diving on our honeymoon, this would be a piece of cake. What I didn’t expect however was how much we would see. We snorkled onto of a reef in the national park area, and got to see so many types of fish. One of the weirdest things is that the fish didn’t seem to care that we were there. I’m so used to seeing fish, and then the second you put your hand in the water, or do anything, they dart away like lightning. Instead, it was as if these fish were dancing with us. As the group of snorkels slowly passed above, the fish put on a show swimming this way and that. There were fish as big as your head, and ones as small as your pinkie.

It seemed that if you were patient enough to look, it wasn’t just in the reef either. On the way in, we spotted the strangest looking fish. It seem to stare at us and be thinking “ hmm, those are the strangest looking fish have ever seen” so I guess the feeling was mutual.

After we got back to shore we had a short break before going for a quick kayak ride down the coast. Our destination was a cove that contained lots of conch shells. I have seen plenty of shells, but there were real live conch inside. Everyone got a chance to hold one of the shells and the conch came out to say hello. Its sort of like a snale, but it has a single arm that it uses with a nail at the end. It uses that arm to turn itself over, or to protect itself when it feels threatened. It turns out that the white sand we were walking on, was actually full of pink specks from the shells that broke up over time.

We finished out our excursion with a Mexican buffet that left a bit to be desired, and some time in the sun, that was nice, but also lead to both Kristy and I getting a bit more sun then we needed.

In the evening we got to have dinner and try something new as one of the appetizers offered was escargot( aka snails.) After dinner we were ready for the party of all parties (according to our table mates) that night on the cruise. Despite the buildup, it was not all that special. We chose not to let that ruin our night. We’re probably one of the only couples dancing most of the night away. We were determined to make the most of the night, and have the cruise we wanted.

As we wound down for the evening and went to bed, we both began feeling a little sick. Not sure if it was the snails, or something else we ate at dinner, but both Kristy and I got pretty sick that night. The motion of the ship doesn’t help when you already feel query, but luckily, after that long night and getting out of our system, we were ready for the next day and feeling fine.

OUR CRUISE - DAY 3

So before our trip, we had planned that our Day 3 would be an exciting 7 hour excursion to chitza itza myan ruins. As we got closer to coming down, we began to rethink the fact that spending 7 hours in the hot sun might not be all that it is cracked up to be. We ended up deciding that we would not do the ruins … and it was probably one of the best decisions of the trip.

What we did instead was a lot of rest, relaxation, and recuperation. John started the day with an upset stomach where kept him inside most of the morning. It was a really different experience from the previous day. Instead of packed areas with every pool chair taken, we found a ghost ship where we could pick any chair and then in five minutes pick another until we sat in every one.

In addition to relaxing, we finally found the serenity adult only area. It turns out that it was right by the food area we always ate at. The serenity area puts the rest of the ship to shame, as every chair has thick pads. There are two hot tubs to enjoy and the view is the right off the rear of the ship. Almost no wind, but it is a perfect location to sit and fall asleep reading.

My bad morning was fixed with a long nap, but ironically that lead to Kristy’s bad afternoon. As I was asleep, Kristy feel asleep by the pool side and got a little more sun then she intended. At least no one can say she didn’t get any tan. Right now, it’s a painful thing, but as the saying goes, “no pain, no tan gained”.

One of the exciting things that we did in the afternoon was watch the boat launch off of the Progresso port and head back into sea. It was neat to see the power, and yet ease of doing that. It felt as if the boat was merely floating above the water with easy and could go in any direction without much effort.

As we were back on the water, it was almost welcome to feel the waves again. While docked at port, there was no movement, which after getting used to it, made you feel a little weird. As soon as we were back on the water, back came the washing machine feeling.

With both Kristy and I feeling a bit under the weather, we took a nap, but least be honest, even if we were feeling great, we would have taken one. I mean isn’t that what vacation is about, long naps and relaxation.

We played it easy this evening, as we knew we had an exciting day coming up tomorrow. Our dinner was good, with the desert being Tiramisu. Its too bad that we were both still feeling a little under the weather, as if we wanted, we could have had unlimited helpings, and you know Kristy would have gotten more then 1 for sure.

This day came at the perfect time, as it would have been a shame to not feel good when you were gone from your ship for 7 hours. We’re excited for the rest of the trip, and ready for our excursion.