Another good one

On Sunday, we forgot to live in Sunday and more than once drifted off to the departure date of Tuesday.  No one wanted to go home.  (well, that is not totally true, Owen wanted to go home for two reasons.  1. he missed school and 2. he missed our car).  You know it is a good trip when you make it from Monday to Sunday and still all like each other.  It had been everything that we had anticipated so far.  (Well, that is also not entirely true, after Ben twisted his foot earlier in the week, things got worse for him on Friday.  While we spent the day in our conference, the rest headed to Old San Juan.  We received a text or two that Ben was sick and couldn’t stop throwing up.  This made him stress out and then have a panic attack.  Back at the hotel they sent up a dr. who promptly gave him a shot in the butt, which made him sore for days and made him sleep.  My dad was worried he was going to sleep and drift off into a coma.  Well, lucky for Ben and us, he made it through the night and woke up refreshed after a 14 hour slumber.  So, with a twisted ankle and a painful shot in the butt, Ben’s trip took a twisty turn from good to bad to good). 

Angie, Ben and Eric went off to go caving on Sunday, while the rest of us hopped in our 14ish passenger van to visit Old San Juan again.  Ivy could live her life in a 14 passenger van with no car seat.  She was in heaven as she roamed from row to row.  I swear I tried to keep her still, but it was a choice between pinning her down and tormenting the rest for 45 minutes, or let her roam.  For better or worse, she roamed and roamed and wiggled and moved and climbed and wiggled and moved.

After arriving in Old San Juan, a few minutes in, it started to rain and pour.  We were drenched as we walked the cobblestone streets looking for shops and enjoying the day. 

We ate dinner at a so-so place, found and enjoyed some ice cream, did a little shopping and made our way back to the hotel.  For some strange reason by that time, Senor Greg was a natural and actually seemed quite comfortable in his new driver position.  Perhaps a 2nd job? 

Oh how enjoyable it was to free from my seminar and back to the fun.

View from the hotel.

 

   

Bring on the Pizza

By Saturday night we finally realized that to feed a group of 19, on average, was $250.00. (Bless you dad!!)  So, when you are tired of spending that kind of money, there is only one answer…. PIZZA delivery!!   

Couples Massage

We made it through one of the most boring seminars  I have ever been to.  Well, boring that is until we brought in the big guns..Steve’s iPod with Mancala and Moron Test.  I was down 2 games to 7 in Mancala, then I staged a wonderful comeback making the score 7 to 7.  Angie ended up ahead 8 to 7 but only because we ran out of time.  We are definitely not done. 

After the seminar ended it was time for our scheduled massage.  Emilee, Felix and Kristi were there before us and we couldn’t wait to hear how it went.  The people checked us in and took us to our locker with a robe, towel and shoes.  As we were changing the others came in to give us the massage info.  The report back was that it was ok.  We were a little nervous.  I know, who gets nervous for a massage… my family. 

Angie and I headed back to the relaxation room to wait.  They came back and said the massage would be together.  We thought they were confused, you see, with our free timeshare gift we could either do 25 minutes each of a couples massage with Steve and Greg – which was not an option, way too intimate I am sure, or a full 50 minute massage each.  We let them know that we were going to take the full massage each.  They knew that.  They said they prefer to do it together.  I guess that is what we get for free.  Ok, together it was.  Imagine if we were nervous before, how we must have felt now. 

Off to the massage room.  It was a big room with candles and low lights and music and two massage beds.  It was very romantic.  They said we could hang our robes on the door and lie down and they would be back.  We were laughing and couldn’t stop.  Angie said with big wide eyes that she was glad we didn’t take everything off!  I agreed.  We took off our robes and hopped onto the beds.  I looked over and saw Angie with her face in that thing and I could not stop laughing. Everytime I thought of us I would laugh.  I figured I better stop this before they came back or this could be the weirdest massage they have ever done.  Deep breaths. 

They came in and started the massage.  I almost laughed only a few times.  The massage finished and we were left alone.  I started laughing again.  Angie started laughing again.  We put on our robes and then we discussed our shoes.  I had the teeniest shoes ever.  I was telling Angie that as I was putting them on I thought, oh, Angie must have given them my shoe size when she made the appointment.  Then I realized they randomly picked a locker and I randomly picked my locker.  Angie could have had these tiny shoes.  We started laughing again. 

Our massage people were waiting outside the door with our water.  We opened the door and they noted that we seemed like we were having fun.  We were.  We took our cold glass of water, which was delicious by the way, it was flavored with cucumbers, limes, lemons, and strawberries.  We would totally recommend it.  As a side note, I don’t think they have lemons here, at least not very many.  At dinner, when we order water with a lemon, we get a lime, and the massage people were having a hard time remembering the “yellow one” to tell us what was in our water. 

We drank our little piece of heaven, changed our clothes and left. 

Our final verdict: we thought it was much better than ok, but we are sure that was because we did it together. 

Thank you Angie for all you do for me and for being there when I need you, and thank you for lying on that bed with your face in that thing.  It was my kind of massage – one full fun and laughs.  It was just what I needed and I wouldn’t have wanted to do it any other way.

This is so boring

The only reason we picked Puerto Rico was for us to attend a seminar.  A two day seminar about bankruptcy law.  We signed up for the Advanced Topics in Chapter 13.  Here we sit, me, Angie and Dad.  First off, let me say that this is not advanced topics.  I think I could  teach this seminar. 

My dad is desperately trying to get his computer connected to the Internet, I am editing pictures that I put on my computer last night and Angie is trying to get my dad’s phone to work like a modem. 

The worst part about this is that it is 12:00 on Friday.  We have to  be here until 4:45 today and then from 8:00 – 4:45 tomorrow as well.  But, on the bright side, I will take one for the team, after all, the conference brought us to Puerto Rico.  Without the conference we may have never came to an agreement as to the location of our long awaited, highly anticipated family trip. 

So, I will sit here and listen to hypotheticals and people who think they are back in law school and I will be reminded how happy I am to be in our office in the 9th Circuit (not the 10th – goodbye Utah) with my extensive knowledge about bankruptcy.  Seriously, attorneys are such nerds!

I will also be happy with our collected loot!  There are a lot of companies here trying to sell us their services.  We have collected thousands of pens, squishy stress pigs, beach balls, backbacks, visors, millions of reusable grocery bags, chapstick, a mug, snacks, a USB hub, sunblock, yo-yos, gold chocolate coins, and a flash drive. 

There is something so fun about free.  Even if we need none of it!  (except the pens and maybe the squishy stress pigs).

I would rather be doing this stuff and hanging out with these guys:

Sunday can’t come quick enough when we are free again to frolic.

A Few Days In…

It is Thursday night.  Everyone is falling asleep (even though it is 7:10 back at home, and because Puerto Rico does not suffer through the random changing of time, in a few days it would 6:10 back at home, it is kind of odd).

We are having fun, well fun minus the long second leg of our plane ride.  It was  so long!  We were so tired.  On our time schedule, we left home at 10:05 pm, arrived in Philadelphia at 3:00 am, waited and left at 6:00 am arriving in Puerto Rico at 10:30 am.  Ivy slept all but about an hour, while Owen spent the flight throwing up in a bag.  Poor Owen.  I either heard him yelling for Greg to get the bag or heard him asking Greg to tighten his seat belt cause he wasn't safe.  Oh how I wish I could keep my anxiety troubles to myself.  We tried giving him a drink of water to which he replied, "they probably have gooder water in Puerto Rico, I will just wait and have some there."  (I wish it weren’t true, but he was totally right, it wasn't good water at all, other troubles I would rather keep to myself).   Little Ivy would wear nothing but a diaper and cried at the mere mention of getting her dressed.  Ok then, diaper and nice baby it is! 

We arrived and made our way to collect the bags.  Owen’s bad day continued when Ben picked up a bag and smacked Owen in the face.   It was a sad start to things.  We made our way outside and a few feet away from the door, the hot humid air was felt by all as we cruised outside in our shoes, socks, sweatshirts and long pants.  It didn’t take long to lose some of those clothes.  We found the taxi service, hopped in our three giant vans and began our final commute to our destination. 

After reaching the hotel, we were thrilled!  It is a beautiful resort on the beach.  We are here on the offseason, which has resulted in a private beach and private pool.  We checked in, explored the beach, the pool, the hotel, our rooms, and let the kids run wild.

Most of us were in bed and asleep by 8:00 that night, asleep to sounds of birds and frogs and warmth and humidity. 

We spent Wednesday hanging out, swimming, playing in the ocean, arranging for a taxi to take all 19 of us to the store and to dinner, and planning our remaining days. 

We spent Thursday arranging for a rental car to take all 19 of us to the rain forest, going to the rain forest, driving back to the store, attending a timeshare meeting (don't ask), playing with cousins, and planning our remaining days again. 

To summarize:

Lowlights from the trip so far:

1. Ben running backwards to catch a football and crashing into a bench and spraining his ankle.

2. The timeshare presentation that Angie/Steve and Greg/I went to today to get a free $120.00 massage.  (I have no idea why we did this, the word free starts to sound even better after a $16.00 breakfast I suppose.  We made it clear that we were not buying a timeshare, that we just wanted the free stuff, to which the representative responded by saying, "well no one wants to buy a timeshare, they just do".  How awesomely true is that.)

3. The smell of the bug spray Greg made us all wear in the rain forest. It is now a heavily debated issue as to whether there were bugs at all or whether we repelled them.

The highlights of our two days so far:

1. Iguanas roaming everywhere. 

2. Dad swimming in what he claimed was the first time since 4th grade. 

3. Watching Ivy put sand in her hair. 

4.  Laughing my head off as we planned for 3 hours how to get around and what to do the next day and figured out at the end that we didn't figure out anything.  (it is terribly expensive to get around or at least get us around, it was $100 to pick us up, take us 5 miles and drop us off and pick us up again and bring us back, a lot of planning is needed to figure out how to get anywhere without spending all of our money).

5. Having Greg drive the rental 14 passenger van (and yes, they really can fit 19 people).

6. Loving that Owen slept soundly for 13 hours after the first night and woke up to say "WHOA, the nights in Puerto Rico are so short!"

7. Driving up to the restaurant last night and wondering if the taxi driver was taking us to be killed.  Everyone was chatting up a storm and saw the restaurant, it was then a hush fell over the crowd.  The final verdict: best steak many in the party had ever had.  It wasn't so scary after all.

8. The frog that Kristi found on her shirt during dinner.

9. Watching Ivy go down the slide a million times.

10. Lifejacket boy wearing his life jacket on the beach and refusing to go into the ocean. 

11. Going grocery shopping to avoid a breakfast repeat of 2 pieces of toast with honey and half a grapefruit for $16.00. (by the end of this trip we will finally have figured out how to save some money).

12. Watching Owen and Alysa as they snuggled together on the bed watching a movie with Alysa's arm around Owen.

13. Teasing Greg about his rainforest planning.  He was convinced by the ever loyal Internet that we get to  the visitor's center and walk to waterfall.  Come to find out it doesn't work quite like that.  No one could bite their tongue as we drove up the winding road and constantly reminded Greg that we could be walking this road with all 19 of us, knocking on death’s door the whole time.  We couldn't resist, but we still like Greg - see #5 about driving the 14 -19 passenger van. 

14. Driving around looking for waterfalls but seeing a snack shop with burgers and hearing cheers from the van louder than when we found the waterfalls.  The snack shop is more our style.

15. Bringing Eric and Greg with us to help us order our Subway sandwiches in Spanish.

16. Happy kids.

 

And that is why we are LOVING Puerto Rico.

The Time Has Come!

After years of discussion, months of planning, lots of shopping, a fair amount of stressing, and one leg of a long plane ride, we are just one leg left from our long awaited, much needed family vacation to PUERTO RICO.

We are all here. 19 people consisting of babies, kids, adults and Ben - just kidding! We are in Philadelphia on a 3 hour lay over. We have camped against the wall and are utilizing all of the outlets to charge ipods, laptops and phones. Even thought our bodies think it is 4:05 am, we just ate breakfast.

We are in clothes from yesterday, with yesterday hair and make-up as we left last night at 10:00 and I am still trying to figure out why I packed two diapers on the plane and sent the rest below, but we are happy to be together for some fun.