Taffy, is that you?!?

In the past few weeks, I have done a few things that have caused me to take a closer look at myself, and have made me wonder, "What is going on here?" and "How did I ever get to this point?"

1. I accidentally missed almost all of the NBA Finals, and when I realized that I had missed it (the night of game 7), I PURPOSEFULLY missed the entire first half of the game because I couldn't quit working outside in my yard. What?!?

2. A couple of days ago, I was outside weeding (and ENJOYING it!) when a guy who was visiting the ranch rode by on his horse and yelled out to me, "Cement! Cement everywhere! It works great!" My reply: "Oh, I don't mind this at all. But I do need a housekeeper, because I hate working in there." And then after he left, I actually thought to myself, "I need to live in a place where it is warm all year round so I can do yard work every day. But then I would DEFINITELY need a housekeeper!"

3. The other night, I decided that when it is too dark to see the weeds I am pulling, and I'm feeling around for them, that may be my cue to go inside. I then wondered, "How do my aunts and grannie in Alaska ever get any sleep? They could stay up all night working outside if they wanted to!"

4. Last night, I was up until midnight making rhubarb pies. Just look at these beauties!

5. My carpel tunnel in my right hand is killing me! It is starting to wake me up at night, and I have to take something so that I can go back to bed. Argh.

6. I haven't watched a single TV show all summer long, and I don't care!

A few years ago, I wouldn't have believed any of these things could ever be true about ME. No. My mom must have written these experiences, right? And so I can only come up with one conclusion about what is happening to me. My inner Oberg is emerging. I am, after all, half Oberg. It's true. And I'm embracing it whole-heartedly. (Well, almost whole-heartedly--I actually haven't gotten around to baking bread yet in June. Shame, I know.) For my readers who are not familiar with with my Oberg heritage, read HERE for the best description I've ever heard. (And then, if you liked that, read some more from my talented cousin, Holly's blog. It's great! And she has an awesome give-away going on--you should enter for a chance at a $50 gift certificate!--How's that plug for ya, Holly?)

And so, with that realization (about the emerging inner-Oberg) comes a warning: Be prepared for lots of boring-to-you-but-exciting-to-me coverage of my yard and garden progress in the next couple months. For starters, everything is up in my garden other than my carrots, some of my corn is over a foot tall now, my flowerbeds are thriving, almost all of the raspberry bushes I took from my mom's this spring are alive and well, and we just got our sprinkler system (almost completely) installed yesterday! HOORAY FOR SUMMER!

~CRUISE~LAST DAY~

The final day of our cruise was spent on Royal Caribbean's private island in the Bahamas:
Coco Cay was BEAUTIFUL and so much fun! In the morning, we played like kids. We decided to do the inflatable water slide and aqua park. The videos at the end of this post will show that. We had a blast!

Then we had lunch. There was an incredible barbeque that was inclusive with the cruise there on the island. It was a HUGE buffet with all the important barbeque food like hamburgers, corn on the cob, fried chicken, salads, etc. After lunch, we went on the nature walk through the middle of the island where all the native trees and plants are growing. It was beautiful. We saw a few iguanas, which are probably as common there as squirrels are to us. This one was HUGE!

After the nature walk, we just relaxed on the beach and played around out in the water for awhile. Then we had one last hoorah by going down the slide a few more times before we had to say goodbye to Coco Cay and get back on the boat.

That night wasn't quite as fun, simply because despite applying our SPF30 three times during the day, we were both FRIED. I really could hardly bring my arms up to wash my hair without crying because my shoulders hurt so bad. Either our sunscreen was a dud, or we just didn't understand how intense the sun is on the beach like that.

Anyway, the next day was super long, just flying home with long waits in airports, but eventually we made it, and I got to see my cute kids again! Even though I had such an incredible time, when it was over, I was ready to be home with the kids and get back to my real life once again. And as happy as I am, living my day to day life, I am already kind of starting to plan our next vacation.

~More~Cruise~Video~

I tried and tried to post the other two video clips I wanted to show last night, with no success, so I'm just putting them in a separate post.

~CRUISE~DAY 3~

On the third day of the cruise, we stopped in Nassau, Bahamas. We didn't get there until 1:00, so we actually slept in that day, enjoyed the fitness room, and then hung out a little up by the pool. The water looked AMAZING! The following picture shows just how blue it was, and trust me, if I would have photoshopped this photo, I would have taken care of that zit on my chin as well! So you can know that that is REALLY how the water looked. Most of our time in Nassau was spent touring the Atlantis resort, which is INCREDIBLE! I don't know how many rooms there are, but there are several humongous buildings full of rooms. And the grounds are so huge that I had my nose in my map most of the time (Tony was making fun of me) so that we would know where we were and where we were going. The pictures we got will help us remember Atlantis, but they don't really do justice to just how enormous and beautiful this place was.
(Note the map clutched tightly in my hand--if not for it, we might still be wandering around Atlantis. )

Starfish--cool. My "humidity hair"--not as cool.

Our favorite thing about Atlantis was being able to see some amazing ocean life UP CLOSE with the aquarium tour. Pictures don't do this justice, so I'm including a few video clips. Enjoy!

~CRUISE~DAY 2~

The first port on our cruise was in Key West, FL. We had planned a snorkeling trip there, and so we were off the boat bright and early to get to our sail boat.

We sailed out about an hour to an amazing coral reef. On our way out, we sailed past our ship, so I had to get a picture of how amazingly large it is.

Tony and a couple other guys on the trip got to help raise the sail, which was really neat.

Once we got out there, we had about an hour to snorkel. The first half hour was great! We were right above the reef, floating around, and seeing tons of fish. My favorite was a really bright blue type--I have no idea what it is called. Tony took some underwater pictures, but we don't have them developed yet, so I don't know if they turned out good or not. But about 30 minutes into it, I started feeling a little icky. I swam back to the boat and puked, over and over again. The fish loved it and all swarmed around eating it, which was totally disgusting! Luckily, I felt better by dinner time.

After sailing back (drinking ginger ale and NOT looking at the water), we did a little souvenir shopping. We found a great $5 T-shirt shop, and then found this shop, which was my favorite. It was FILLED with all kinds of shells, sand dollars, sea urchins, blowfish, shark jaws, and alligator heads. Things got a little out of control when this one attacked me. Haha.

That night on the boat was formal night, which I love. We were able to get all dressed up, enjoy a gourmet dinner, a great show by the singers and dancers, and then finished the night at the Dancing Under the Stars dance party by the pool where we got right down in the middle of it and danced like kids! It was a great day.

~CRUISE~DAY 1~

So, we've been home for almost a week now, and I'm finally taking the time to blog about our trip. First of all, I just have to say that it was the BEST vacation I have ever been on, and if you're considering going on a vacation, I highly recommend this one. Every day was absolutely AMAZING, and that is why I am going to do a seperate post for each day. I think that if I tried to blog about it all at once, I would post so many pictures that I would fry blogger or something. (And it's past 11:00 right now, and I don't want to be up until 2 in the am!)

We flew into Miami on Sunday, which was good since we missed our connecting flight at JFK airport in New York, and had to rebook. If that had been on Monday, we might not have gotten on the boat in time. Missing the connecting flight actually turned out to be okay since we were able to run like crazy people for what must have been at least a mile through a HUGE airport (we kind of felt like we were in a movie or something), got to our gate just in time to see the airplane start backing out, learned what to do when that happens, and ate dinner in NYC, all of which are things that neither of us had ever experienced. It just added to the adventure of it all!

We still got to Miami in decent time--about 9pm--got a rental car, and thanks to Violet's GPS, drove straight to our hotel. We got a sweet deal on a suite (thanks, priceline!) and were able to sleep in a little Monday morning. Then it was off to Everglades Safari Park (with the GPS, of course.) I am SO glad we went and did this instead of just hanging out at the hotel Monday morning. It was so neat to see a whole different landscape that is home to such different animals than what we are used to seeing. While waiting in line for our airboat tour, we got our first glimpse of the local wildlife. I leaned over the railing, looked down, and saw THIS:

Here's Tony sitting on the airboat waiting to pull out. If you see a drop of sweat on his brow, it's because it was already 86 degrees with 70% humidity! Welcome to Florida.

The Everglades. I always thought it was a swamp, but it's actually a very shallow, slow-moving river that is home to all sorts of animals we don't have here in Wyoming. Of course, the ones we were looking for (or looking OUT for) were alligators and pythons. We were able to go all over through the Everglades for about 40 minutes, and I was never tempted to jump off the boat. Yikes!

After the boat ride, we were able to walk around through their park there and see alligators, with a fence between us, of course. I also LOVED the variety of plants they have there. I thought this place was just so beautiful!

One of the coolest things at the Everglades Park was the alligator show. This guy is an alligator trainer. He was in a ring with about 5 or 6 gators who all responded to their own names and obeyed commands. It was amazing! We learned lots of cool facts about alligators, and at the end of the show, Tony got to hold this baby gator. I decided to pass on that experience.

I tried this instead. These are "Gator Bites," deep fried pieces of alligator tail. It basically tasted like chicken but was just a little tougher. They served them with wing sauce, and they were pretty darn good.

Everything was smooth sailing leaving the Everglades, returning our rental car, getting a taxi to the port, and getting on the boat. Getting on the boat is the part of the vacation I worry about the most--I had to check my important manila envelope like 20 times to make sure we had all the paperwork that we needed, and was still worried that I might have forgotten something. But we had what we needed, and we breezed right through the checking in process. We were on the boat by about 1:00, and of course headed straight for the buffet!

We pulled out of Miami at about 5:00. It was so cool. Coastal cities are so interesting with the way they go from ocean to skyscraper in about 10 feet! It was so fun to be up on deck pulling out and just seeing the city fade away behind us.


That night we enjoyed our first fancy dinner in the dining room (one of our favorite parts of cruising!) I had escargot and duck, along with some other things. After dinner, we went to a show, then to salsa dance class. Finally, we finished the night at the 70s Dance Party. This is our director, Ricky, and the Village People (aka cruise director staff) showing us how to get funky!

Lasting Value

Two days ago, I FINALLY cashed in on a gift certificate that I got two Christmases ago. I went to a salon and got a pedicure and manicure. It was my first ever experience with either of these luxuries (which might shock many women my age). The reason I waited so long to cash in was that I felt like something as fancy as a pedi/mani needed an "occasion." Nothing super important ever came up that I felt was worthy of such a treatment until NOW. Tomorrow we get on our plane to head off for a wonderful vacation to the Bahamas. So I figured that I'd get my nails done so I would look and feel amazing for our trip. The manicure looked great, and I LOVED the pedicure!

Then I went home. Within two hours of just being a mom, three of my poor fingernails had the paint chipped. I almost cried. I had waited for almost a year and a half for this wonderful gift, only to have nothing but chipped paint to show for it just two hours later! I know, I can just repaint them, but I was hoping it would last a little longer than TWO HOURS!

This made me think about value--and what I value. And I'm pretty certain that I won't ever pay for a manicure again. (By the way, the pedi has been hidden inside socks and still looks great!)

However, there ARE things that I am willing to pay for--like everything we'll be doing this next week. Sometimes, I can see the confusion on faces when I tell them that we are going on a cruise. Without them saying anything, I can hear the questions in their mind--"What? Aren't you the girl who won't pay more than $10 for jeans? Don't you pack a sack lunch for your kindergartener every day because school lunches are too expensive? And haven't you been using just one purse for seven years because you don't want to spend any money to get a better-looking one?" My answer to those questions is, "Jeans wear out no matter what I pay. School lunch comes out the other end within a day just the same as a sack lunch. And the purse I have works just wonderfully, regardless of how it looks." Those things don't matter to me, and I don't see any lasting value in them. I also look at them as ways I can save money so that I can use my money for things that are actually important to me, like spending six days with just Tony, strengthening our relationship, seeing and experiencing things that we never have before, and creating memories that will last a lifetime. To me, this has VALUE.

So the next time I'm in a restaurant (eating out my allotted once a month), and the waitress asks me what I'd like to drink, I will answer, "Water," and then think about the money I just put toward our next vacation!