Vacation–a well needed (deserved) rest!

Sometimes you just gotta go and after the past 6 months we needed to go.  

Let’s see, in the last year I’ve cracked a rib and then broke it, both by coughing. Two brutal bouts of bronchitis, hence the rib.  Then I got fleas.  Yup you read that one right.  New puppy brought fleas of which, apparently, I’m very very allergic.  And then when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, my body revolted a little farther and botched 3 discs.  One bulge, one herniated and one torn.  Go big or go home I say!  After two unsuccessful epidurals to ease the pain, I opted for surgery to fix the herniation.  It worked but apparently my body wasn’t done with me yet.  While in physio therapy I heard a pop and all the pain over the last 6 months returned in one fell swoop.  Drugged out of my tree and three days later (of which I remember maybe an hour or two) an emergency surgery was required.

I’m now 5 weeks post 2nd operation and feel absolutely great.  No pain baby!  Now I just need to get a thumbs up from the surgeon so I can at least start doing some sort of exercise.  I don’t expect to be bench pressing 200 lbs, well ever, but it would be nice to do more than walk (YAWN).  I’m hoping for swimming!

So back to our vacation…Rob and I had decided after the first surgery to go away but then after the second surgery we really needed to go away. Spring break in our area is the first week in April.  We have been going down to Florida for the week since we moved down here.  Why not, my parents have a house in Sarasota, it’s warmer and above all they have a pool!  So off we went, just me and the girls and spent the week with my mum.

The drive down is pretty easy.  We stop in Savannah which is about half way.  Once in Florida the girls pretty much spend every waking hour in the pool.  Now the problem with that, is this:

Don’t worry, she wore her goggles every day after that. 

Now it’s not all lounging about the pool.  We spent a fun filled day at the most magical place on earth (east coast style)!

Then after a week I left the kids with my mum and met Rob in Miami and from there we flew down to the Dominican Republic.  Paradise!

We stayed at the Gran Bahia Principe Bavaro and huge resort in Punta Cana.  It was beautiful. Now that being said I need to disclose it’s an all-inclusive.  Not that there is anything wrong with all-inclusive but that usually means just ok food. But what we didn’t expect was the total lack of customer service, even though we stayed in their Diamond club.  A la carte meant you could pick your main meal but the rest was buffet.  We had to go back up to the reception every day to book are dinners because they kept “forgetting” to do it for us, thank god the drinks were free!  These are mango daiquiris, delish!

Now lounging about the beach and doing nothing was great for the first three days, then I needed to do something.  So I took Rob zip lining.  It was amazing.  Your probably wondering how I could go after two surgeries and my answer was how could I not.  It’s not like I was hanging from my arms LOL.  You are strapped in and basically sitting.  Now there is nothing glamorous about this but I can now check it off my bucket list!

Most nights we had a couple drinks in the bar after dinner and went to bed.  Crazy right? I mean the point of the vacation was to sleep and catch up on rest (check)  Our last night we met two girls from Pittsburgh (Hey Kasey and Chelsea, I may have had a few drinks so I apologize if I got them wrong )They were hockey fans too, so Rob could talk hockey all night.  (He’s telling everyone I picked him up two hot girls).  We ended up having dinner with them and closing the restaurant.  It was a great end to the vacation.  Girls, if you are reading, I hope you got your salad and wings at Chillis in Charlotte on your way home!

Now back to reality, in more ways than one!

I’m back, feeling good and ready to go.  My nephew’s birthday is this week and he asked if I could make cookies for the kids in his class and I was happy to do it.  So I made him these:

I also made some lion cookies for my friend Nicole, from Salsa Sweets for her daughter’s birthday this week too.  The theme was safari and I just wanted to make lions and came up with these sweet cookies:

Next up I made my light boxes.  I’ve been wanting to ever since I read Mike at Semi Sweet’s blog post on his.  So simple but I made it easier, at least for me.  So meet Sunny and Cher, my two new light boxes. Now when the sun doesn’t come out or I finish after it goes down, I can now take decent pictures.  (ok, after this one) YAY!!! I also have all the step by step for this, so will do a tutorial as well. I’m so going to do his reversible table top too!

Today is also Treat Day!  With the temperatures in the 80s I thought frozen and went with frozen yogurt pops.

• favourite yogurt
• fruit of choice

Freeze and enjoy! Rowan did

So thanks for coming by and listening!

See you soon!