Belated Vacation

Don't ask me why I've been so bad at posting.  I mean come on, it's the summer, I have tons of time.  I really have no excuses really.

Here are a few pictures from the family vacation from the week before..... in a quick nutshell

Gary wake boarding!

 Chris and Gary coming back in from fishing, alas no fish

 Went to 'Paws and Claws' pretty cool how close you could get to the animals- feeding the giraffe 

 More feeding, those wily sheep and goats!

Super cute capybaras and babies

Look out! 

 Fishing- SIL and BF did A LOT of this!

 Our favorite place to soak up the sun- got Lots of reading done here!

 And.....finally shooting targets.....

 A little freaked out with what I'm holding

 I totally look like I know what I'm doing.....

 Storms a coming batten down the hatches

 SIL and my awesome hat! Don't be jealous. Gots to protect the face from the sun.

The end.

Super sore

Yesterday was an active day- although I'm not as sore as you would have thought. Thankfully!

So, vacationing in by a lake enables all sorts of outdoor activities.  Instead of running through a concrete jungle filled with cars and people, I basically ran through the woods. No, I wasn't trail running, I was on the road. I will say that the gravel in certain areas made me go a little slower. I have to say that I do get a little worried about wildlife. It may be my overactive imagination, or stories that I have read.  During the weekends the lake is packed with boats and wave runners, but during the week, not so much.  I kept thinking what would I do if a bear came charging out of the woods.  I know I can't outrun it and I sure can't out climb it. I kept looking around as I ran, what could I climb on, what could I get under where the bears claws couldn't get to me. Would I be able to call Gary? Fortunately I didn't have to use any of my "emergency" plans.  

It's also a lot hillier here, they aren't awful hills, but hills non-the-less.  

The rest of the afternoon consisted mainly of reading down by the water while soaking in the rays. We didn't even go out on the wave runner. It was nice and warm today too.  This required a nice dip in the lake. I get a little paranoid when I'm swimming in the lake, I hope that all motorized vehicles see us bobbing there in the water. 

P.S. You can't see the island we swam to, it's just that
far away, it's beyond that last dock....and some

I am not a strong swimmer at all.....however today we, Gary, Jess(SIL), Chris(someday to be BIL) and Tim(FIL) all decided to swim to a "nearby" island.  I swam from a closer dock while the rest started from our dock.  Oddly enough I kept my flip flops with me and put them on my hands. I guess they may have helped with paddling a little. It ended up being probably 1/2 a mile....which gives me hope for a future triathlon. I will most certainly not be the fastest swimmer out there, but maybe the biking and running can help me.  I've never tried to combine the 2 before. Perhaps I will try and duathlon, that doesn't sound too bad, run, bike, run.  

Anyway, I don't know how long it too me to do the 1/2 mile back and forth swim, but I felt like I was in the water for awhile, swimming on my back was also very helpful.  Thankfully the hubs stayed with me and kept asking me if I was ok. I think the thought at any moment I would capsize.  I am quite proud of myself. I didn't swim today, but if its sunny tomorrow you better believe I'm gonna tackle that lake again.


Oh also, I am a friend of wild animals. Unlike my "someday" BIL who is killer of them. I was very tempted to try and grab one.

Weekend Update

Did everyone have a nice weekend?  

Did you eat out? Work out? Hang out?

I had a nice weekend, but for me the summer is my glorified weekend. I suppose I should say that summer is my favorite season as a teacher.... It's family vacation time.  Friday was kind of a blur. I worked in the morning and Gary did some errands. We grabbed dinner to go at one of fav grab and go places on H street, Shawafel.  Mmmm....

Saturday we attempted to wake "early" so that we could get on our way for our 5 hour drive to the Poconos.  Gary's family has been renting a place there for the last few years along Lake Wallenpaupack.   We had to pack up Belle and drop her at a co-workers of Garys and then drop Sebastian off at my mom's(her grandson). Unfortunately we hit traffic around Baltimore so we added another hour to our trip.  I however slept most of the way.  I tend to fall asleep quite easily in the car....call it a blessing or a curse depending on how you look at it. If I'm driving, it's a curse for sure!

Gary's sister and her boyfriend were joining us, sadly Eric, their other sibling was still out at sea. He hasn't been able to join us a in a couple years. Hopefully next year! We all went out for dinner to a local BBQ joint.  Now, not being from the south I've never truly had "BBQ."  This was pretty good though, but I do welcome the day when I can officially say I've had southern BBQ with all the fixings.  Gary and I split the whole rack of ribs and also got a side of 1/2 sour pickles and some corn on the cob.  Kinda a messy meal.  I also got mint chocolate chip ice cream. A large only cost $2.60, which is amazingly cheap since a small dish of ice cream in DC is like $4. Robbery I tell you! 

Here are some pics of our smorgasbord....complete with family members chowing down. Flattering I know, I'm sure they will all thank me.

 I think she's drinking smurf juice....

 Chowing down

 I spared you the other 10 shots the hubby took. It's like he wanted a flip book of me consuming meat.

Sunday started off cloudy, but thankfully the sun broke through the clouds.  We spent the morning/afternoon reading, jetskiing and playing "King of the Tube." Which was basically all of us attempting to pull ourselves out of the water and onto the tube. Harder then it looks peeps...this is where my upper body strength would come in handy.  We have yet to be pulled behind the jetski....

The dock....

 Out and about....

 Later that night.....fire, lit with yes, you guessed it, or not, a flare....did you know that you could light a fire with that? I mean it is fire, so I guess you probably do know....it's just it's not the first thing I would have grabbed.

 Deliciously yummy s'mores.  I think my favorite part is completely charring my marshmallow, or as Jess would say, mallow.  I like to have to blow mine out. Gives it that little extra crisp and cooks the whole thing through. It's about the only thing I will eat burned.   This will not be the last of our weekly fires.  

Have you ever water-skied? 

Tubed?

Yeah Mon!

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N!!!

One perk about being a teacher is the vacations, spring break, Christmas, holidays and summer vacation.  I honestly do not think I would be able to make it as a full-time teacher without having breaks. I would be soo burned out, ask any teacher, I think they might just feel the same way.  

I never went on a spring break before, not in high school, or college. I mean I was saving in high school and I was pretty broke in college. Gary and I have gone to New Orleans on two of our spring breaks, which was great and lots of fun, but we wanted to go some place where we could just sit, read and soak up the sun. Enter spring break planning.  Enter partners in crime, some fellow teachers :-)  We ended up booking our trip in January, the cheapest place that we could find a good all-inclusive deal was in Jamaica.  I have never been there before and I don't think one of the other couples had either, but the other couple was just there on their honeymoon about a year ago. But we stayed at a different place and this time we were with friends! 

I used Book-it.com to make the reservation, I had used it in the past when we went to Italy, they seem to have some pretty good deals.  Tripadvisor is another good website to get ratings of different hotels.  Sometimes though people are just too picky, too "diva."  We booked at the Royal Decameron Club Caribbean.  There were some really cute "villas" that you could get, but way out of our price range, some of these were right on the beach.  You can't really say that ours was off the resort, but it was right on the edge. The rooms weren't huge, but I didn't plan on spending a whole lot of time in them anyway. They were clean- huge points with me! The bathroom wasn't anything to write home about, but again, CLEAN, with good lighting! The shower curtain was not gross and grimy, another huge point!  The bed was king size, no gross bedspread (that's one thing I hate sometimes about hotels/motels).  We also had a closet and a flat screen TV with LOTS of channels, again not that we planned on really watching much TV.  We had a little sitting area outside our room with two Adirondack chairs.  

There were two restaurants that we could make reservations at: a Thai and a seafood, we ate at both, nothing fabulous.  I ended up getting the "steak" and potatoes for dinner at the seafood restaurant, per recommendation of our fabulous waitress we had for 3 nights.  Can I just say that the two nights we had reservations we also ended up going to the buffet too! DON'T judge:-) Free is free.....More dinner for dessert, yes please!

The beach was great, looong, water was warm and they had a trampoline out in the middle of the water.  Now, I am no Michael Phelps, so getting out there was a little difficult, but I did it, twice! 
I also went snorkeling twice too. The first time I freaked out there were tons of sea urchins all over the ocean floor.  The second time I went out I used a life jacket, to keep me afloat.  Very helpful! 


Our routine went as follows:  

• Get up, apply sunscreen ALL over
• Go to breakfast buffet
•  Head out to "our spot"  very near to the swing bar (that's what we labeled it)
• Read, soak up sun, nap, occasionally cool off in the ocean
• Lunch buffet
• Soak up more sun, swim, or for the paler ones sit in the shade of the umbrellas up by the bar
• Break in the shade, nap/read
• Shower, change
• Dinner buffet
• Drinks - throughout the day
• Nightly entertainment

* Repeat for following days :-)