Happy 2010!!

I did get a post in before the new year, just to say HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! I have a packed next couple of days as usual. Tonight we are having a girls night to see our good friend Hannah back to Louisiana, although we wish she would just move back home!! Tomorrow night is New Years Eve of course so we are going over to some friends house and then Friday is January 1st 2010!

Be Safe and Have a Happy New Year to All!

Belated Merry Christmas!

Well another Christmas Day has come and gone and as usual, I need a vacation from my vacation! We stay so busy over the holidays as I am sure everyone does and I wouldnt have it any other way! It is great being able to spend this time with our families and be thankful. I must have been a good girl this year as Santa was VERY good to me!





Mr. A did really good this year, you can see my sparkling gift from him below:

Now that the new year is coming, I have a couple of New Years resolutions:

1. Be More Organized

2. Be more faithful to my blogging! I am going to have to be better!

I hope that everyone has a fantastic New Year if I do not blog before then, which at the rate I go most likely wont happen!!

A to Z

One Letter at a Time...
A - Age: 24
B - Bed Size: Queen. Which is almost too small for the two of us and our tiny 5 lb dog! haha
C - Chore you hate: Folding laundry
D - Dog's Name: Roxy
E - Essential start your day item: Coffee
F - Favorite Color: I love all kinds of colors but if you had ever been to my house you would see that my most favorite color is red!
G - Gold or Silver or Platinum: Silver
H - Height: 5'2 and a half!
I - Instruments you play: Umm currently, none. I use to play the piano if that counts and the clarinet in 6th grade?
J - Job Title: Individual Insurance Specialist
K - Kid(s): Definitely
L - Living Arrangements: Mr. A, Roxy, and I live on a 40 acre farm in the house that we gutted to the studs and remodeled less than a year ago.
M - Mom's Name: Sharon
N - Nickname(s): Juju (thats what my nieces call me). Before that it was Jonesy, JJ...etc.
O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: Never, lets not jinx that now!
P - Pet Peeve: When People do not take responsibility for their own actions
Q - Quote from a movie: "You had me at hello" from Jerry McGuire
R - Right or Left Handed: Right
S - Siblings: One Sister
T - Time you wake up: Depending on the day and where I am going. Most of the time anywhere between 6:30 and 7.
U - Underwear: Victoria Secret Pink
V - Vegetable you dislike: I like most vegetables but I hate uncooked onions. If it is sauteed or fried I like them though.
W - Ways you run late: Roxy taking her sweet time to go to the bathroom in the mornings before I leave, traffic, not wanting to get out of bed!
X - X-rays you've had: In 7th grade I sprained my ankle, I think thats the only xray I have ever had, knock on wood!
Y - Yummy food you make: well...my husband would say chocolate peanut butter pie and rattlesnake eggs (sausage and cream cheese wrapped in a croissant).
Z - Zoo Favorite: It has been so long since I have been to the zoo other than SeaWorld so I would have to say Shamu! When I was a kid I wanted to be a marine biologist and I was always fascinated with marine life, especially whales and dolphins.

MIA

It is very clear to me that I am a horrible blogger! I have been so busy with work and everything else lately that I have definitely neglected the Alford's blog.

A lot has gone on since I last wrote I'm sure but what that was, I am unsure of now. Of course we had the 15 meals of Thanksgiving with the Alford and the Jones families. One of which we hosted Thanksgiving night at our own house. It was so much fun having everyone over and sharing a meal in the house we have worked so hard on and to see the transformation we have made. We had so many compliments on everything, all the work has finally paid off. (Although I know my husband reads this, don't get any ideas...I still would like to move from there in the near future!). See our house is perfect for just us but when you have an older home, some things just drive you crazy and he knows what those things are! Plus we are at the age where starting a family is probably in our close future so I want something a little bigger.

The biggest highlight for me in the last few weeks was BLACK FRIDAY. Yes, you heard me right. I am one of those idiots that gets up before the sun and shops til I drop all day the day after Thanksgiving, and I love every minute of it! Myself and three others started at 3:45 on Friday morning and hit every store within our town I believe. My envoy was packed to the ceiling and we all had a blast doing it. Not to mention witnessing the crazy eyes of mad shoppers, fighting to get what they want. It is so much fun and the best girls day one could wish for. I mean what could possibly be better than shopping all day long!

Then of course after Thanksgiving, it was time to put up our Christmas decore. This was the first time we had decorated this house for the holidays and it fun to find new things to put up. Of course we like to go a little overboard, or I do at least, with the holiday decorations. So early saturday morning we started our trip to go pick out the Alford Christmas 2009 Tree. Nothing like the Griswalds Christmas, but still just as fun. As I sifted through the boxes that had been stored all year long that hold our Christmas belongings, Mr. A began the process of hanging out outside lights. Icicle lights, wreaths, and greenery.

Here are a few inside photos I have of what we did although they do not really do it justice and are just a mere few of the things we actually put up:

Our Christmas Tree with a few of the packages I bought underneath on BLACK FRIDAY!!

Our monogrammed stockings we recieved last year as a Wedding Present hung from our mantle. (Of course these pictures came from my phone so they do not really do it justice but you can see some none the less)

And my three small trees family. You can not see the ornaments very well but they are all red or green with white polka dots, very cute if I do say so myself!

I love Christmas! Of course our schedules are booked every day from here until December 25th but we love it! We are hosting our annual Christmas party tomorrow night so if you are lucky and I have time, I will post some photos of that.

Also, we are attending my niece Katie-Blairs 1st birthday party on saturday! I can not believe how fast the time goes by!! Happy Birthday Katie-Blair!!

P.S. We also saw New Moon last weekend. Is is sad that I am just a tiny bit obsessed with Bella and Edward and after the movie decided to read twilight and finished it in one day?? Don't answer that!

My Hubby!

Well, apparantly Mr. Alford has been reading my blog. My secret is out! haha JK! He is constantly throwing sayings I have used in this blog about his hunting obsession to prove to me that he has in fact read it. So, in honor of him being such a good husband (although I constantly seem to be complaining about his hunting craziness), I do truely love him and don't know what I would do without him!

So in honor of my husband, I thought I would answer a few questions about him:

My Husband!
1. What's his name? Andy

2. How long have you been married? 9 months

3. How long did you date? We dated 4 and a half years before our wedding day

4. How old is he?24, he is 6 months older than me

5. Who eats more? DEFINITELY HIM. Hands down. We constantly joke he has a tape worm.

6. Who said, "I love you," first? He did

7. Who is taller? He definitely is.

8. Who sings better? haha well I love you babe but I will have to go with me here. Not that I am the greatest, but he knows his singing voice is not the reason I married him! haha


9. Who is smarter? Well it depends on what the topic is I guess. He is very smart and full of useless information about anything you want.

10. Whose temper is worse? I will say mine. He has a temper but it takes a lot to make him mad. My temper comes out a lot more often I must say.


11. Who does the laundry? Well we usually share that chore, but only because he is so picky about his clothes. I hate putting up laundry so he helps with that.

12. Who does the dishes? Mainly our dishwasher. That was the first thing on the list when we remodeled our house, to install a dishwasher!


13. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? He does


14. Who pays the bills? Most of the bills I pay. I mean we have a joint account so it's our money paying the bills, but I actually physically mail the payments.


15. Who mows the lawn? That is definitely Andy's job.


16. Who cooks dinner? Usually I do. He doesnt mind to cook and if we grill which we do alot, he grills the food.

17. Who drives when you are together? Most of the time I drive but only because he drives me crazy when he drives since his eyes are glued more on the side of the road than the actual road. He is always looking at everything but the road so for my own sanity, I drive most of the time.

18. Who is more stubborn? I will go ahead and say myself. =)

19. Who is the first to admit when they are wrong? I would have to say probably Andy. Remember I said I was the most stubborn? He is really good about compromising and I try to be.


20. Whose parents do you see the most? Well we live really close to Andy's grandparents and Aunt and Uncle so I would say we see them the most. Although I work with my mom everyday and we see my family a lot as well because we are always doing something together so that might be a tie.


21. Who has more friends? Well I dont know. I think that Andy has more friends that he talks to on a regular basis than I do. You know, about hunting and such. =)

22. Who has more siblings? I do although I only have one. Andy is an only child.

23. Who wears the pants in the family? haha Well I think we try to compromise on a lot of things so I would like to think it would be eqaul but I think most people would think I do. Andy is just very laid back and I am a little more demanding at times but we do compromise a lot which I think you have to do.

Love you baby!

Meet the Flinstones...

This weekend we attended a halloween party at our good friends Kelley and Tates house. This is the second annual halloween party they have had. And as most halloween parties go, a costume was required. Now I love dressing up for halloween but every year it seems to be a nightmare (literally!) to figure out the perfect costume for Mr. A and I to wear! Here are a few photos from the last couple of years:

Halloween 2005

Halloween 2008:

I went as a cowgirl (I am missing my hat in this photo) and Mr. A went as Dale Earnhart Jr. as people tell him he looks like him all the time.

This year another couple we hang out with a lot that I have mentioned before, The Coleman's were attending this party with us. So we wanted to find something really fun to be. Michelle and I went on a search for the perfect costumes and this is what we came up with:

THE FLINSTONES!!

Mr. A and I were Betty and Barney and Peck and Michelle were Fred and Wilma.

Here are some more photos from the party:

Me and my hubby Barney Rubble

He was a good sport, unfortunately in this photo you can not see his BIG FEET!

Me and Kelley, she was a sorcoris (spelling?)

Some of the girls of the night dancing in the garage!

We had a great weekend and are really getting in gear for for the holiday seasons coming up! As I have said many times before, Mr. A is an avid hunter and the hunting season extravaganza's are upon us. This means that our mournings are spent with him in a tree stand and me still in bed! And many of you know how this is I'm sure, you have to listen to the friends talk for hours about what they saw and their whole day in a tree. Then if they do actually kill something you have to talk about it for months after they actually drag the carcus in, cut the meat out and store in in the freezer and most likely mount its poor head for everyone to see.

Don;t be jealous ok! haha It could be worse I say, and I love him just the same! Happy Fall Everyone and I hope you have a great halloween party to dress up for as we did!

Is is Over Already??

Why is it that vacations seem to fly by so quickly??? As they say I suppose, Time Flies When you are Having Fun!



We did have a fantastic vacation and are sad to be back to reality. The weather in Florida was great last week, they apparantly had record highs in terms of heat. It was over 90 degrees every day which for October is not the norm. We went to the pool, played golf, wondered around Disney World, played miniture golf, shopped til we dropped at outlet malls, ate seafood, went to Universal Studios, ventured through scare zones and haunted houses at fright night, got sunburns, etc. Now we need a vacation from our vacation!



Yesterday was spent catching up on laundry and relaxing. Today we are back to work unfortunately. I will have to say that all in all our vacation was great and I am sad to be back in town! It was definitely depressing to get off the airplane in Tennessee in the 50 degree weather! Although I am excited about the holiday season to come! This will be our first married Thanksgiving and Christmas!



When I have more time I will post the photos from this years trip. Until then I will leave you with a photo of us from this same vacation in 2005 (This is an annual trip we take every year):

Vacation

Well I have decided, I am horrible at blogging! I love doing it and I love reading other blogs, but I feel that I lack at having the time to actually post! It has been 3 weeks since my last post and that is usually the lag time between. I am really going to try to be better.

I just wanted to tell everyone (rub it in your faces) that the Alford's will be leaving our great state of KY on THIS saturday to the sunshine state! We will have a whole week of laying by the pool, relaxing, drinking tiny drinks with umbrella's with all the time in the world! Mr. A and I have not been on real vacation since our honeymoon (which I know was only in january) but still, we deserve it after everything we have done this year!!

I will post some photos when we get back and hopefully I might be able to get a post in before then but if not, Happy Fall everyone!! Fall always puts me in a good mood. I love this time of year. Something about mums, fallen leaves, the colors and the fabulous weather just puts me in a good mood no matter how bad my day is!

Remembering

8 years ago today when I heard the news, I was a sophomore in high school sitting in algebra class. For the rest of the day we watched the news on tv, all in awe of what was going on. I just wanted to take a moment to remember those who lost their life or a loved ones life in honor of our country. No one will ever forget the moment in time when we saw the second plane fly into the second tower, it gives me chills just watching the reruns today. Where were you?

On a happier note, Happy Birthday to my good friend Jessica! I am looking foward to dinner tonight. Also, in the previous post I mentioned we would be working on our patio this weekend. Well we decided it would actually be cheaper and a lot less work for us if we paid someone we know to pour a concrete patio instead in a couple of weeks. So this weekend we will be painting the outside of the garage instead which I know sounds crazy but you will understand once I post the pictures! We will also be chearing on our alma mater Western Kentucky University tomorrow night in their first home opener! Go Toppers!!

MIA

I have been MIA for a little while, things have been pretty hectic with us lately. Just for a fast catch up session, we will review the happenings in the Alford life for the past couple of weeks.

First I had my golden birthday of course which was great. We pretty much ate for 4 days and I was able to spend a lot of time with my hubby which was great. So now, I am officially 24.

I have been really busy with work lately which is fine, but it just seems like time is flying by! I made a short shopping trip to Louisville last weekend with a gal pal while our hubbies were on a boys weekend and this past weekend Mr. A and I ventured to Missouri for an Alford family reunion. Although this is the first time I had actually been to this because andy had missed it for the last couple of years, I was really inspired by it. It was amazing to me to see so many people excited to see thier family that they only see once a year and how pumped they were to know so much about their family tree. I mean this was a lot different than any family reunion my family has ever had. Although we do have a fairly large family, we usually only see aunts, uncles, etc at our reunions. I mean the alford family leaves no one out! It was cousins, their families, aunts uncles, sisters brother in laws, etc etc etc...I was amazed!

So that pretty much sums up our past couple of weekends. If any of you know or are married to any avid hunters like myself, you know that time spent with the significant other is getting ready to drastically decrease as the hunting seasons approach us. Mr. A spent all day on sunday dove hunting and in a couple of weeks he will be duck and deer hunting like crazy! Ahh the life of a hunters wife! haha

I am looking foward to our next weekend as we are FINALLY going to put down our patio! As you remember we remodeled our home by pretty much gutting out everything and starting new. Well since moving in we have been trying to work on the outside as the landscaping I do not think had been touched in 15 years! We have mulched and all of that and although we live on 40 acres, I feel as if our outside living space is still lacking. So this next weekend before all of the hunting extravaganza's begin, Mr. A and I will be making our patio out of pavers. Hopefully it will look something like this:

Have a good week everyone!!

Golden

Well, Im getting old.

I am having my golden birthday on monday, I am turning 24 on the 24th of August. No major plans really. Just going out with some friends this weekend and then on monday I have the day off and hubby and I are going to have a day of shopping and dinner at the OG..."Olive Garden" for those of you who didnt know. See where we live in Kentucky, it is like the capital of restaurants. We have every restaurant known to man, except an OLIVE GARDEN! So we use any excuse, well I do anyways, to drive to the OG nearest to us -- about 45 minutes away.

Nothing much going on with us lately. Last weekend we had a big weekend full of entertaining at our house which was fun. Last night we waited for our good friends Jordan and Amanda to deliver their new baby Anslee into the world which finally happened at 12:20am this morning so congratulations to them on their healthy new little girl!!

This weekend, my niece Kendle has her 1st soccer game and of course it's my birthday on Monday. I will try to post some pictures of all of the festivities later.

One more year left until I will be a qaurter of a century old!!!

Weekend Re-cap

You know those lazy weekend days where you just lay around the house on the couch watching movies and sleeping late?? Well we never have those weekends!! I think sunday we decided we wanted to sleep in and woke up at 8am!!

Friday night we had a fun night out with our friends the Colemans. We went to dinner and bowling. Of course we had to bet on the game, girls against boys. Apparently Mrs. C and I are cooking breakfast for the boys on opening day of duck season, before they leave at 3am!! Obviously we lost =(

Saturday we got up early and got some things done around the house before we traveled out to Andy's parents house for lunch with the Alford Clan. After lunch I dragged the hubby around for some shopping. I wanted to find some a new coffee table and end tables set. After hitting about 3 different places with no luck he finally talked me into going home. He bribed me by offering to take care of some things on the honey-do list if we could just get home! haha Isn't he sneaky! Then we got home and did get some the rest of the trim put up which I was most excited about!! Now all we have left is putting something above our kitchen cabinets and our remodel will finally be complete (for now). My dad is coming out tuesday to help my hubby finish up the job. Then we were invited by the Colemans again to join our friends out for a night on the town. After some convincing, we finally agreed we were still young and could drag our exhausted butts out of the house (although our plan was to just stay home and watch a movie). We had a blast though so it was a good decision.

Sunday we attempted to sleep in. Woke up at 8am, of course. I cooked breakfast while the hubby did some things outside. We worked more around the house until the Jones clan, (my family) came out for dinner last night for our first big party at the new house. After everyone left we crashed on the couch and FINALLY watched our movie.

How sad is it when you have to schedule in time just to snuggle on the couch with your hubby and watch a movie!!

Show Us Your Life

Kelley's Corner is hosting Show us Your Life-Wedding Reception and Honeymoon so I thought I would participate although I am still new at the blogging world and have never done this before. Of course I just posted a few weeks ago about our whole honeymoon but I have never really posted much about our wedding other than a few photos.

As far as our reception goes, I really wanted to have a fun reception so during the planning process we really put an effort into the reception being fun. I wish I had better photos of the reception but I think our efforts paid off because everyone still talks about how much fun they had at the wedding, GOAL ACCOMPLISHED!!

Above is one of my favorite pictures of us from our reception only because it is just so typical of us! I am the one posing and smiling for the picture and Mr. A is eating and making a crazy face, as usual! Not to mention the fact that we both were starving at the reception but when the time came to actually eat we were so overwhelmed that we hardly ate a bite! We stopped at McDonald's on our way to our hotel later that night!

Here we are being introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Alford. You can't tell from this picture but everyone there was laughing because me being the sneaky bride I was, I wanted to add a little suprise in the mix for my husband for putting up with my OCD for the last months of the planning. See he is a farmer and works for a farm equipment company in sales. So for the introduction of our bridal party we played I'm Your's by Jason Mraz. When it came time to introduce us, I slipped in something. If any of are country music fans you would appreciate this. I changed us to be introduced to the song "International Harvester" so as the DJ starting saying our names a revved up tractor was playing in the background. Mr. A couldn't believe I had done this and you can see in the picture his suprise! I had some doubt if this would be too "redneck" for some but everyone seemed to get a big kick out of it!

This pictures is only about half of our wedding party lined up, we had 14 attendants, 4 ushers, 2 ring bearers, 1 junior groomsman, and 1 flower girl for a grand total of 22 people plus the bride and groom!!

You can somewhat see in the top of this picture the lights that we had draped from the ceiling. The pictures turned out really dark but I was really happy with the lighting effect we had. I really like candles and lights, I think it puts off a really romantic atmosphere. You can't tell very well in the photos but we had a black and white theme with red accentend throughout. The chairs were black and we tied white satin bows on all of them. The tablecloths were black and we had mirrors on all of the tables with a mixture of glass bowls with floating candles or glass hurricanes with tall candles and all tables had many small votive candles all over them. Luckily we had no fires! I was really disappointed with our photographer that he didn't get any photos of the centerpieces especially considering the long list of DEFNITE photos I wanted to get. So needless to say I dont have a single photo of a centerpiece! Oh well, it's over now though right!

Here are some more random photos from the rest of the reception:

For those of you who havn't seen it before, here is the link for a sneak peak at our wedding video:

http://www.dailymotion.com/user/digitalcraftpro/video/x8x623_alford-highlight-movie_people

I will leave you with my favorite picture from our wedding (although it is not from the reception) and then a few from our honeymoon:

I loved this picture just because I thought it was so cute! My little cousin in the front covering his eyes cracks me up everytime I see it!

We went on a wonderful cruise to the Carribbean for our honeymoon:

So there you have it, our reception, in a nutshell! We had a blast at our reception, especially since the stress of the day and everything was behind us! We hope that everyone that attended did as well!

Roxy Alford

Here are some more recent pictures of our "child". Who can say no to that sweet face?!!

"Rub my belly Mommy!!"

She is not spoiled at all!

On another note, a drunk driver wrecked right in front of our house last night. Its a miracle he is alive because his car flipped and landed in a ditch but he walked right out of it. Luckily no one else was on the road at the time! Drive carefully!!

Guard Dog's and Rodents

So I havn't talked much about our baby (and by baby I mean our dog) Roxy. I have talked a lot about our wedding and our home remodel but have never brought up our pride and joy, Roxy, and considering the night we had last night, I figured this was just as good of a time as any to talk about our favorite little fur ball.

Andy bought Roxy for me about a year after we started dating. I was living by myself and really wanted a puppy. I had researched and knew exactly what I wanted and even had her named Roxy before she even existed! Well Andy found her for me (what a good hubby!)! She is a yorkshire terrior who came from Missouri. We drove four hours there and back in one day to get her and at the time, she could fit into the palm of our hands. She weighed a whopping 1.5 lbs when we first took her to the vet. When I get some more time I will have to scan some older pictures of her when she was so tiny but for now, the picture below is one of her and my hubby (boyfriend of one year at the time) snuggling:

Roxy is the sweetest little thing. She loves to snuggle, be rubbed, and play with her mommy and daddy. She is great with kids and my niece Kendle loves her more than me I think! She is now four years old and weighs 5.5 lbs! What a fatty huh? I don't know what our life would be like without her!

Well back to the reason for this post, Last night. Roxy has always been the root of many jokes within our friends and family because she is so small and cute! And Mr. A and I always laugh back and say she is our gaurd dog. Since I did live alone for a while, I loved having her with me because although she is small, I always felt safer having her with me because she would always let me know if something was coming or around. She always barks when someone comes to the door or growls during the night if she hears something spooky. Well last night was no different.

The time was 3:30AM when Mr. A and I were woken up by Roxy barking like crazy. She had been out in the house for some reason and was barking and had come back into our bedroom which is really unlike her. Since she is of course spoiled rotten, she has always slept in the bed with us (usually her head on my pillow and my head pushed off onto the mattress although her favorite spot is between Andy and me). For her to be going through the house in the middle of the night was really strange.

Of course Mr. A and I were really freaking out thinking someone was in the house or who knows what. Well I grabbed Roxy and Andy, well he grabbed his gun. (Of course!) He walked out of our bedroom behind the door very slowly with gun in tow sneaking around to see what was causing Roxy so much trouble. Then he saw it. He snickered a little bit and said "Oh your going to be mad". (Knowing my OCD I have had lately regarding bugs and rodents since we have moved to the country). So you know what it was.....Drumroll please....A MOUSE! YUCK! Well I don't know if Roxy had scared it to death or what had happened while we were still asleep before she went crazy but Mr. A said it was still alive but it wasn't moving much. I of course was freaking out that it was playing dead and as soon as he tried to get it the stupid thing was going to run who knows where throughout the house. So without him walking towards it anymore he needed a box to try to catch it in. (Can't you just see us now, Mr. A chasing a mouse through our house at 3AM???)

So he slowly walks back into our bedroom looking for a shoe box and the first thing he grabs is this off of our nightstand:

This box was something my sister had used as a gift box for one of our wedding gifts and it matches our comforter. So he grabbed this decorative box we have on our night stand to catch a nasty rodent! Typical Man!! He slammed the box on top of the mouse quickly, which if the mouse hadn't already had a heart attack due to Roxy chasing it or who knows what I'm sure he did then. Now A is wondering how he is going to get the lid on. He slides it underneath and there you have it, mouse in a box. Probably the nicest and cutest place that mouse had ever lived!!

So see, Roxy really is our guard dog!! We really praised her after that for finding that critter in our house and hopefully she will continue this pattern and scare to death any unwanted guests we might have in the future!

Good job Roxy!!

I will leave you all with our Christmas Card photo from a couple years ago with our little furbaby we love so dear:

Honey-Do's

So this weekend we have decided to be brave. We are hosting a cook out at our new to us project of a house that is still unfinished. There are just a few things left to do but this is a big deal for me as I want everything to be finished and look perfect when people come to our house, especially if we are hosting something! I am very anal about that kind of thing so my poor hubby has had a long honey-do list this week as we are having everyone over on friday night (which is tomorrow)!! The house is ok on the inside, we have just hung some curtains, straightened up his "man-cave" and tonight we need to finish the finishing touches up on the outside...(move some pots around, pull out some things, and cut down some trees) you know -just some minor landscaping. =) Did I mention I have the best husband ever that puts up with my craziness???!!

Here is a photo of my and my honey doing one of his favorite things:

(ignore the camo-I promise we are not redneck, my husband is just an obsessed outdoorman who loves to kill innocent animals and finds it funny to dress me up sometimes but thats another post )

The Honeymoon is Over

So today I have been dreaming of vacation in October since I have been talking about it everyday with our traveling couple Jessica and Erik(I know I know, I just got back from the beach-what a rough life you say). I thought I would post some details and pictures from our wonderful honeymoon since that is the last BIG trip we have been on and of course we had so much fun!

So if any of you know my husband, you would know that deciding on a vacation spot for our honeymoon was not an easy task. He is a cold weather person and I am a warm weather person. Not to mention he is a huge history buff and loves to go to different museums and learn about the history of our country, whereas I am ashamed to say I would be bored to death and prefer sitting by the pool somewhere. Since he is such a great hubby, he decided it was best to make me happy on the first week of our marriage to start out on the right foot so we picked a warm destination for our honeymoon. My husband is also an adventurist and not someone who can just sit at the beach sipping on a fruity drink all day so we had to pick somewhere where we would have a lot of entertainment and things to do other than go to the beach or pool so I of course had to compromise as well (we got the hang of this marriage thing early on!!) . So where did we decide on....??? We decided to go on a 7 day Royal Caribbean Cruise that took us to Cozumel, MX, Cayman Islands, and Montego Bay, Jamaica. To compromise with the hubby, our cruise left from the port in Galveston, TX so he did get a little history in and was able to see some very cool ships. Speaking of Galveston, TX, everyone remembers that little hurricane that went through there a few months ago, yep we were really thrilled about that at the time! Needless to say it did not mess up our plans at all and we were able to see up close and personal all of the tragedy and turmoil that that storm actually did cause in Galveston. It was a sad way to start out the trip but they are definitely putting things back together and will be better than ever!

Back to the honeymoon, below you can see a picture of our cruise ship, The Voyager of the Seas (which I would HIGHLY recommend). We took this picture as we arrived at the port out the car window so it definitely does not do this boat justice as to how HUGE it really was! It took us 2 days to just find our way around the place!

For any of you who have been on a cruise before, you all remember doing the most exciting emergency evacuation drill. Just what you want to think about before you leave port to go through the middle of the ocean with no where to go but down to the bottom!! What a way to start your vacation! See the picture below of my thrilled hubby (this was his 1st cruise, my second) as we go through the drill, lifejackets and all!!

So after we found our way around the boat for a while, we went for our first formal dinner. Of course one of the best things about going on a cruise is definitely the FOOD!! On a cruise you can order everything off of the menu if you want, all included in the price of your food. These are things you might never try again. We tried things like escargo (I had already had but the hubby had not) This is snail for those of you wondering and you should definitely try it, it tastes just like a mushroom. We had wonderful desserts, steaks, and our favorite was the LOBSTER. I had never had lobster before and usually my seafood tastebuds stick to shrimp and crab legs but I loved it! Andy of course loves all kinds of different fish so he tried all the fresh fish on the menu. It was definitely something you never forget because everything is so formal and nice, it's not something you do everyday. Here a picture of us at dinner on our first formal night:

Here is a shot of everyone at our table which was neat to meet people from different places with different jobs. One guy was a pilot for Delta Airlines and another worked in a state penetentiary (wouldn't want his job but he did have some crazy stories!!)


For our first day off of the boat we were in Cozumel, MX which was by far the best excursion of our trip (considering all of the other ones we booked were cancelled but I will get to that later). In Cozumel, we chose to go on a catameran boat, go snorkeling, and we were taken to a private beach island which was great. Well as you remember I said my husband is into adventure and I am not. Well I had been snorkeling before and it did not go so well. I can never figure out how to breathe out of those masks and operate the flippers at the same time so I was not super excited but going to brave the sea's anyways for my new husband and be a good sport. Well to say the least, snorkeling was my favorite part of the whole trip! I LOVED IT!! It was such a better experience than the one I had before. My goggles worked and so did my flippers! It was so neat to see everything under the water, it is just a different world under there. All of the fish and the coral were so beautiful, I could have stayed out there all day and it was such a great experience to share with Andy. He of course was like a kid in a candy store, diving under water and touching the bottom of the coral, I was not quite that adventurous but I loved it none the less! We had some really cute underwater pictures that we bought from the trip (of course they make money off of the honeymooners) but they are not with me now. I will have to post them later but I do have some that we took on our own on the boat and the private island. Another perk of the catameran was they offered free margaritas and beer. If anyone has had a margarita in mexico, they are just not the same as the ones here, they are soo good! So of course we enjoyed a few, AFTER the snorkeling of course!! When we got to the private island, they had all of these water toys you could play on which of course we took advantage of. See the photos below:

What a cutie!!
Our next port of call was the Cayman Islands. Once we left Mexico, our boat was really rocking. The wind was terrible and there were 13-20 foot waves. Luckily we never got sick but a lot of people on the boat did. When we got to the Cayman Islands, we had like snorkeling soo much that we chose a similar excursion, snorkeling with Sting Ray's among other things. Well the wind was so bad that they cancelled our excursion and many others. It was so bad we had to port on the back side of the island and take a taxi to the tourist part of the island. We were fine when we got there, we walked through many of the shops and got some neat stuff. Andy was impressed with Grand Cayman a lot more than Mexico, of course the town you can tell is cleaner and has a lot more money. The shops are higher end. We were able to buy a few bottles of authentic liquor as well as Grand Cayman's signature island, Rum Cake.

Here are a few photos of Grand Cayman (the water is so blue in the carribbean, it's sickening!):

Our last stop was supposed to be Jaimaica. Well as I said before, the wind was insane and the waves were 20 feet tall. Apparently at the port in Jamaica, there is only 25 feet from the bottom of the boat to the bottom of the ocean so they were afraid with the waves being so tall that they would take our boat up and down and we would hit the bottom of the ocean floor, so we didnt get to go to Jamaica!! We were totally bummed but we entertained ourselves anyways. Here are some random photos from the rest of our trip:

My hubby the adventurist climbed the rock wall on top of the ship, with crazy wind and everything! I was a nervous wreck but he made it out ok of course!

Our second formal night

The view of our dining room from the top down, there were 3 levels!

A picture from our last day hanging out at the pool on the ship

So there you have it, a little sneak peak into our honeymoon and a few of the many pictures we took along the way!