Moving Day!

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Just when you thought I'd forgotten!

Days 5 and 6 of our honeymoon!!! hahaha, I sure know how to drag it out, huh? :) The last couple of days are going to be really short, I promise! Both in one post even! Mostly just pictures.

So, by day 5......well, I'm just gonna say it. We.Were.Bored. I know! We must be losers to be bored on a tropical island with all you can eat food and all you can drink alcohol! We also missed Isabelle and Zoe :(

Pretty much all we did was lay on the beach in the morning and then lay by the pool in the afternoon. (ahem, you didn't hear it from me but a certain person named lee might have stayed in the room and watched golf.) (but you didn't hear it from me) We also noticed that I had developed some sort of disease on my left arm. here's our day in pictures:

A very nice man saw me struggling with the self timer and asked if he could take the pictures for us!

And because one pose is never enough:


So, I wanted to re-create a picture that we have from our first vacation together in Florida in 2006. After several attempts, this is the best we got:

And here's what we were trying to re-create:

There were a lot of mosquitoes in Jamaica. I was surprised. For some reason I didn't think they had any! Being from Oklahoma, where the mosquitoes run rampant all summer, I knew that I am a magnet for these suckers. Here are just a few of my battle wounds. Trust me, I still have the marks on my arm today, but I think they will completely fade, eventually.

All of our swimsuits on our patio! I might have purchased that pink one from Target the day before we left. Those two pieces were the only ones left in my size and they happened to be the same color, so I took it as a sign to purchase. Isn't it funny that it ended up being my favorite suit out of all of those?! :)

Time for evening pictures!! I wanted to get some pictures of us on these rocks out in the ocean. I didn't realize that it was going to be an adventure to get out there. Here we are all dry and pretty before. I wish this pic wasn't so dark.

Hahaha, okay, so we had to walk quite a way out to get to the rocks, but first we had to walk across the gross slimy and sharp rocks under the water to get there. Here are a couple action shots of Lee. He was not cursing under his breath or anything like that :)



I was disappointed that my bright idea really turned out to look like senior portraits gone wrong! It was worth a try though! The ones of Lee are good for a laugh! He had a couple more but they were pretty much the exact same pose :)

LOL! I can't believe I'm even putting these on here.

Time for dinner! I look awkward but it's all I've got.

On the second night, we discovered the martini bar they had at the resort. We proceeded to go every night after that. They made a pretty mean dirty martini.

On this particular night, however, the guy on the right below got me into lots of trouble. I was bored! I figured it wouldn't hurt to drink, oh, say 10 or so of these.


I have no pictures of us from the rest of the night, but I can assure you that it was a great night! We went downstairs to eat and our friends Don and Julie happened to be eating at the same place so we all sat together! It was really fun to get to know them. In fact, it was a blessing that we did sit together because dinner literally took 3 hours!!! We had been to the restaurant before and service was not that slow, but I guess they were super busy. Luckily we didn't really notice because we were engrossed in dirty martinisconversation.

After dinner, we all decided that we should hang out at the pool by our rooms and drink 2 bottles of champagne and a bottle of wine. I'm pretty sure that most of my wine ended up in the pool. I'm told that there are pictures, but they haven't been sent to me yet. We had a really good time though :)

Oh, and we saw this little guy twice after dinner. Once on the way to our room to change, and then again when we were out a the pool! He was actually not little at all! And he was basically knocking on this door! It was hilarious. He didn't like us. I tried to stick my head down there to get in the pic with him and he took off running (sideways like crabs do, which made it even more funny)

So, on day 6, our last day, my camera broke :( It just kept saying lens error and wouldn't do anything. It started acting funny when we took the rock pics, but I didn't think it would just shut down. So, there are no pics of our last day or of the 7th day, which was the morning we left.

Day 6 we woke up and watched tv all morning. I think we watched 2 movies, lol. I finally dragged my hungover very tired self out of bed at 11:30 am, and only because Lee had to eat something. I did feel better after lunch so it was a good idea. After lunch we went out to the pool and I read for a while, and then Don and Julie showed up as well as the NY couple from the zipline day. We just all sat around and chatted for pretty much the entire afternoon. We also watched a wedding, which was really big in relation to the others we had seen there. This one had guests! I think about 10 guests! It was fun to watch, but weird because the "aisle" is basically right across the pool area, so we were all hanging out in the pool while she walked sown the aisle to get married! And we all watched the ceremony!

Anyway, we did the pool thing, went to dinner at our favorite restaurant, and called it a night! It was a pretty low key day, which was good because we had a ton of packing and getting ready to leave in the morning.

All in all, we had a good time in Jamaica. It was so nice to get away and just not have to worry about wedding plans anything and relax in the sun. But, we won't be going back to a Sandals resort, probably ever. It just wasn't worth it to us and we'd rather go somewhere where we can explore and aren't confined to one area and can go to dinner at a restaurant that serves realistic size portions!!We did enjoy our little vacation though! And I'm ready for another already!

I really should be working!

This has been a very unusual week, I've been busy at work! Last week too, it's strange!

I really don't want to work on this stupid thing (very mature, yes.) Instead, I would rather be:

Working on my new blog! I have only changed the layout 5 times! And created as many headers, actually more, I re-did a couple for each layout! lol. Now I'm really just waiting for wedding pictures so that hopefully there's a good one in there for it!

Shopping at the grocery store. We have no food. I love to go to the grocery store, even when it's busy. I love marking things off of my very thorough lists!

Buying stuff at Lowes for our bookcases! We are building them this weekend. Hopefully we will still be married on Monday, I'll keep you posted :)

PAINTING!!! I am repainting the following rooms before the end of summer:

living room (includes entry and hallway)

kitchen

bathroom

man room!

There are many other things I would rather do than work, but those are top on my list right now! Annnnnd, because I clearly need more exclamation points in this post, !!!!!!!!!!!

Not Me Monday!

I have seen so many people doing this Not Me Monday thing, and I'm finally doing it myself! If you like mine, go on over to MckMama's blog to read more!

When I went out to dinner with Melissa on Friday night, I did not eat a sopapilla for dessert. That would not be in line with my weight loss goals.

Melissa and I did not proceed to stop at QT on the way to see My Sister's Keeper even though I was way too full after not having had the sopapilla.

I did not cry from beginning to end of the movie, despite not being disappointed that they left the majority of the story out and totally changed the ending. (ugh, WHY do I go see movies based on books I love???!!)

I did not rant to Lee about the differences between the book and movie for 30 minutes while he was trying to sleep.

On Saturday, I did not do nothing while Lee mowed the lawn and went to change his oil.

Lee and I did not get into huge arguments slight disagreements about how to build the bookcases that will go in our living room. I did not get so frustrated that I walked out of Lowes and waited by the car. No, I would never do such an immature thing like that.

I did not take a 2 hour nap when we got home from Lowe's.

We did not eat ice cream and drink a bottle of wine and watch The Holiday on Saturday night. I did not cry during that movie too. I also did not crush up oreo cookies and put them on my ice cream. It was not delicious.

On Sunday I did not stay in the house the entire day.

I did not rip out the 8 foot long scrapbooking table that we just build and installed less than one year ago.

I am not telling everyone that I am sacrificing my scrapbooking room for Lee's man room.

I am not, in reality, happily giving it up so that I don't have to watch sports every waking hour.

I am not working on a new blog and layout for my married self.

I am not excited about the household projects that we are currently tackling. And I will not be posting tons of before and after pictures when we are finally done!

Once upon a time I loved stuff like this

I do it every Sunday. When I'm on top of things, I get it done on Saturday. I sit down with my cookbooks, computer, pen, and paper and plan out meals for the next week. I've been searching for recipes for an hour. I think we need a new cookbook (or three). The internet is useless. (or has been tonight) Why is this so hard??

Thursday Ramblings

Who already finished all of her thank you notes for the wedding gifts? That's right, this girl!! Who hasn't even started on theirs? You got it, Lee! Actually not only did I finish all of mine, I also did a lot of Lee's, the people that I know also. I left his family for him to do and a few randoms that I don't know. I am actually really just grateful that Lee will actually write his own! I know a couple of people whose husbands wouldn't write any! I really wanted to get them all done last weekend, but we have so many generous people in our lives that my hand was cramping up from all of the writing :)

I actually have quite a bit to get done at work in the next couple of days. I'm not looking froward to it. I guess it's either feast or famine around here. When it's famine I complain that I'm bored and when it's feast I complain that I don't want to do it! haha. I need to train the new girl on some stuff she's taking from me. Funny, I don't remember ever getting training on it, but whatever. So clearly I would rather procrastinate on here than actually get anything accomplished.

So yesterday, it was rainy here. (Today too, but that's not the point.) When I came in to work yesterday, it was dry, but you could tell it was going to rain off and on all day. So then it started raining mid-morning. I have to email Lee about the weather because we can never tell what it's actually doing outside since we are so high. He informed me that it was slowing down and about to stop, so yes, I could go home for lunch. Well for some reason, I left about 45 minutes later than I usually do (I think I was blogging about the zipline). Anywho, when I left I didn't really need the umbrella. But when I came back, it was a whole different story. I mean, I could have been on candid camera because I'm sure that I looked hilarious. You may recall that I had a huge wind resistant umbrella that broke several several months ago? Yeah, well I never got another because I was so angry that it broke in the wind. So all I had was Lee's old one that he said had been broken but I'd used it a few times and it was alright. Um, well, it's totally trashed now. If you know what it's like in downtown Tulsa when it's windy, you will understand. It's like a wind tunnel down there because of all the buildings. I mean seriously, it can knock you over if you're not careful. So there I am, 1 block away from the building, in my skirt and flip flops in pouring down sideways rain and huge wind gusts. It was not a pretty sight. I was basically shuffling because my flips were soaking wet and I didn't want to fall, my skirt flew up at least twice because I didn't have a hand to hold it because I was holding the umbrella with one and with the other, I was trying to keep the umbrella from collapsing around my head or flipping inside out. Basically, the umbrella was collapsed around my head the entire time and I couldn't see! Haha, I know that I looked hilarious! By the time I got in the building, my hair was in knots, and the entire right side of me was soaking wet. Not my head, mind you, remember, the umbrella completely encapsulated my head! And I was wearing a white shirt. Yeah, you could see through it. I reenacted it for Lee last night, and he found it pretty funny. Needless to say, when we saw that it was raining this morning, he drove me to work so I didn't have to go through that again :) Sorry that was long.

In other not-so-exciting events, we got new bedroom furniture the other night! Yay!! We really needed it. I have before and after pics, not to worry :) Well, we didn't really get it, since they only had one of the four items in the warehouse, but we did get one nightstand and the rest will be here in early August. A long time for an impatient person, but it will be worth it! Before we had Lee's headboard and dresser that he bought only about 5 or 6 years ago, but I suppose with all of the moving he did among those years, it got really beat up. One of the feet on the dresser broke when we moved into our current house (2 years ago) and really, it's only still holding up by the grace of God. And don't get me started on the drawers! They are terrible!! And we had 2 nightstands from Sears I think, the kind you have to put together yourself, and the front of my drawer on the nightstand just fell off one day about a year ago! haha.

Here is my nightstand before. I usually set the front of the drawer up so that it looked like it wasn't broken, but the night before I took this, it fell off and I was to annoyed to put it back! Notice how short it is!

And here's the new one! Isn't it beautiful?! I couldn't believe how tall it was! I really feel like a grown-up now that we have this! And soon our bedroom will look like two adults like there instead of a college dropout! (Isabelle loves to pose for photos)

And look at this! This is the top drawer and it has four plugs so that you can plug in your phone and camera, etc and charge them in the drawer! I don't know why this excited me, as you can tell, all I have to charge is my phone :)

Also notice HP6 sitting there. I'm re-reading it to be ready for the movie! Although, I told Lee last night that I didn't know why I was reading it, because I was just setting myself up to be disappointed when they leave things out of the movie. They really do a good job, I mean, they can't put every single little thing, but I wish they could :)

Day 4: The Zipline!!!

Ooookay, so I feel that I should preface the story of Day 4 by letting you know how absolutely terrified I am of heights. Seriously it's ridiculous. I can't even stand on a coffee table. And looking up at really tall buildings even causes my hands to get sweaty and makes me feel like I'm going to barf. That being said, I agreed to go on the zipline excursion in Jamaica. Mostly because the excursions were freaking expensive (in my opinion) and if we were going to do one, we were going to do something that was really memorable. And I'm really glad that I did it!

There were 8 people from Sandals that went, including us and our friends Don and Julie. We also befriended a couple from New York, but, even after hanging out with them for several days, we never got their names! haha. So after our 1 hour bus ride (which, btw, was WAY better than the ride on the first day to the resort), we arrived at the zipline place. It was incredibly packed, and we learned that a cruise ship had docked there for the day too. Long story short, the zipline place doesn't have the staff for that many people at one time so we had to go in that huge group of 40 (i'm estimating low too, it was probably more). 40 people ziplining = a LOT of waiting in between rides = annoyed Sandals customers. But we still had fun.

Me getting my gear on. I wouldn't normally point out the monstrosity that is my behind, but you can see here that the harness accentuated it oh so nicely, and apparently Jamaican men love the booty, or "bump" as we found out they call it. This man in particular, whom Lee came to dislike greatly. haha.

Ready to go! You can also see that the harness does not let the men feel left out. ;)

Just an idea of how many people there were. We were dead last too :( (some of the photos from this day are blurry, my camera was set on a strange setting that took me forever to figure out)

Cute :)
Getting a lesson on all of the basics of ziplining. We all immediately forgot what was said here. It's hard to remember how to break when you're flying through the jungle praying that your harness doesn't break!

Our first line was a baby, only 150 feet high, if I'm remembering correctly. You can see me waiting on the platform in the back. The zipline company had people at a couple of the stations that took our photo!

I spotted the guy with the camera and smiled for him. Just because you are 150 feet in the air doesn't mean you should ruin your picture with a horrified look on your face!

Very proud of myself for not totally freaking out on the first one. That couple behind me is the NY couple. I was so glad that she was just as scared as I was so we bonded :)

After waiting on a bench for a little while (seriously), we joined the rest of the group to wait in a huge line. I was terrified to find that this was going to be much higher, 350 feet up I think.

Hey, if we're going to stand here for 40 minutes, we might as well take lots of pictures.

Holy s%*t! Do you see those little dots? Yes, that's where we were going to. It was the smallest platform ever, built around a tree. That was our next waiting station. We zipped across probably a 50 foot span and landed on that tiny ass platform. I think there were about 4 people on it at a time. I am not sure how I didn't have a heart attack while waiting on there. I did not dare look down while I was on it, but I was told that it was basically held up with tiny thin branches. That did not make me feel secure!

Here is a closer shot. The guy in red is a worker and yes, he is hanging out on a chair talking on his cell phone!!

In order to get off of that tiny platform, we seriously repelled straight down. It was scary, but not that far of a drop. The man who was catching us after the drop was my friend from the beginning, who put my gear on. He asked me if I was related to J Lo. I was really confused and kept thinking, is that what he said? I'm very white, why would he think I'm related to her? He then turned around and patted his butt and nodded his head! It made sense then, and I really couldn't do anything but laugh. Lee went down right after me and he said that the guy said something to him about my butt. I don't think he was happy but he didn't act mad so I laughed.

Anywho, after a couple more lines, we were on our next to last one, which we were told was the longest zipline in the world. Something like 1500 feet long. I also believe that we were about 500 feet high. Which is the equivalent of a 50 story building. Folks, I work on the 50th floor of a building and I cannot even get more than 3 feet close to the window! It was different though because you're in the tops of trees so you really can't tell that you are that high up. But, on this really long one, you can tell when you're in the middle of it because most of the really tall trees clear out and you can see everything! Pretty cool and terrifying at the same time.

Haha. Here I am with my admirer, in a pic taken by the staff. You can't tell but I was pretty much shaking like a leaf from the ride in. Also notice the huge cushion strapped to the tree! lol. In case they don't catch you, you won't smash your face into the tree! Lee said that when he came in after me, the guy said something to him again and Lee responded by letting him know that I was his wife. haha. He said that they guy kept apologizing and saying that he thought I was his sister or something!

And here we are waiting for our last ride! We were on the second of the 2 really small platforms. This one was not as bad as the first though.

There I am!

There's Lee!

On the bus ride back to the beginning!

We arrived at the beginning and went to the little shop to select our pictures. A guy was pulling them up for us and this other one kept saying "oh the pretty one! the pretty one!" It was bizarre, I have never had people say anything like that to me. Lee was like, these Jamaican men really like you. I'm not gonna lie, it was kind of flattering to have people compliment my most hated body part, especially when I looked like complete crap with zero makeup on and had been wearing helmets and gloves with God knows what in them and I just risked my life to fly through the air.

Okay, I'll stop talking about how I'm such a hot commodity in Jamaica. Seriously people, I'm not trying to brag about it at all, I just thought it was really funny. And I was sort of happy that it made Lee mad at them :)

The zipline took almost the entire day, over an hour longer than it should have since the cruise people were there also. When we got back to the resort I think it was around 3:30. We immediately went to eat and get water. We did that whole thing with no water! And it was still in the 90's the entire time. Then I think we laid in the pool for a while and then got ready for dinner.

Our traditional pre-dinner photo session!

:)

That's all folks!

Yeah Mon, Day 3

Number of times we heard "Yeah, Mon" during our 5 day stay: 1,987,349,231,234,175. No joke, that's the actual number :)

So day 3 was a Wednesday. By this time, we had gotten into the routine of waking up, putting on our swimsuits, and slathering on sunscreen. Then we would head to breakfast. On this particular morning, we were stopped on our way to breakfast and invited to go on a "party cruise" for later that day. Those were the only two words we needed to hear, and we promptly signed up :)

After breakfast, we decided that today we would try the beach. We had been at the pool all day on Tuesday and it was fun with the swim up bar, but it was incredibly hot. Jamaica was much hotter than I would have liked (mid- to upper-90's the whole time). But, when we were on the beach it wasn't as bad because of the ocean breeze. Remember the pics from Day One, where I showed you the picture of the beach right outside our patio? You can't see it in the picture, but this was just a few steps from our back door!

Me with my mimosa from breakfast and two beers already on the table between us! Nothing like Red Stripe Light at 10am :)

The view from our chairs. On the right, you can see a little blue and white square in the water. They were little floating island type things, and you could swim out there and hang out on them if you wanted. I did not want to :)

Lee exploring the water. Why do boys always do this? I don't want to know what's in that water!
After a long morning on the beach, we headed in to get our stuff so that we could go to lunch and then on to the party cruise! This was on our bed when we went into the room! So cute!

Me at lunch:

Lee at lunch :)

The view from lunch!

These birds were everywhere, especially at the restaurants, which all had outdoor seating. They ate the food that people left! Those two bowls stacked next to him were cleared from an empty table and he was eating out of them! They would also come and stand on your table or a chair next to you while you were eating. Some people hated them (i.e. really mean guy from philly that kept throwing things at them), but most people thought they were cute and funny.

We finished lunch a little early and had a drink at one of the bars while we waited to board the ship. The picture is a little dark

My pina colada. The dark stuff is rum. There was a lot.

:)

The only acceptable picture from the cruise. We had a good time and met our friends Julie and Don on this cruise. They were also scheduled for the ziplining the next day, so I was happy we would know someone!

View of part of the resort from the water. Our room was in the far right building, the middle blue/green section.

After the cruise it was time for dinner!

Lee at dinner :)

Okay, no I am not just throwing up the deuces because I'm that cool. In the picture above, we were at an Asian place for dinner. Probably our favorite restaurant there, it was good. But the portions, like most of the other restaurants, were tiny! They were like side dishes for us! I got tempura shrimp for an appetizer and it was ONE piece of shrimp! Haha, so we decided to go to the Italian place next door for...round 2!

We thought it was hilarious! We took about 27 pictures :) We had also had way too many several red stripes, so I'm sure that helped. There was a couple sitting next to us, and I don't think the appreciated our giggling. Whatever, we had fun :)

We missed the sunset pictures on the beach because we went on the cruise, so I made Lee take some with me after dinner(s).

In case you didn't know, Lee hates taking pictures. He was a really good sport about it the whole trip! He only complained once a day, and that was when I took 373 pictures each night of us before dinner. I couldn't help it, I kept trying for the perfect one!

Tomorrow is ziplining day!!!!