Routine Stuff (mostly)

So, every week I'm in a meeting for my section at work. It's the unit heads in the section, plus a few other special people. I'm not a unit head. Apparently I'm special. When we're at the meeting and someone doesn't have anything to contribute they usually say something along the lines of "Just routine stuff."

And that's how I feel about my blog. Our life is mostly routine stuff right now. This is part of the reason why I haven't blogged much lately. The other reason is that we're busy. We're really busy, but it's with work, and school, school activities, and seeing friends, and day-trips to the beach (today we went to a beach that's only about 45 minutes from home, it's not super-nice, but I've been to worse (and it's only 45 minutes from home!).

We did something that is both routine, and not routine. John and I went to Negril (the farthest resort town from home (only 3.5-4 hours away, seriously...if you love beaches, you must live in Jamaica)) to celebrate our anniversary. Last week we'd been married for 13 years (we've been together now for over 17 years - what?!). It's amazing to me that he's stuck with me for that long. This is not routine, because it's not common for us to ask my in-laws to come down for 10 days so that we can go away for six nights. It is routine because we have celebrated the last five anniversaries on an island. True - the last two have been on an island that we've lived on, but they're still islands! 

My  view on of my days.
Most other days looked similar to this.

Another thing we're doing right now that's not routine (but still sort of is), is Malachi getting his Epilepsy testing done. This year we're doing blood (routine), EEG (routine), and MRI (not routine). We've taken the blood (end.of.the.world.people. it was actually pretty torturous for him), and we did the MRI yesterday - yay for Saturday hours! This was his third MRI, and the first I've been in. He went under for his first one - and I was pregnant. John went in for the second one - because I was pregnant. This time I wasn't pregnant, so I went with him. I expected the noise, but I wasn't expecting him to have a hard time with it. But the machine is big - and really, really noisy. He had ear plugs, and then two layers of padding outside of his ears. He got really nervous, and about ten minutes in he started crying from the ear plugs. He said they hurt. The technician (who was amazing with Malachi), fixed him up and Malachi made it the last 40 minutes like a champ. He was so brave, and mature. I was so proud of him.

Tuesday he's going in for the EEG. We have to sleep deprive him, so he'll sleep. The sleep deprivation won't have to be too strict. This kid falls asleep almost every morning on the bus.

Other than our vacation, and Malachi's somewhat routine Epilepsy testing, life is "just routine stuff,"

A day to celebrate

We didn’t know how to celebrate our anniversary this year.

We have traveled the last few years, but felt like staying close to home this year because we wanted to go to the Marine Ball (scheduled for the night before our anniversary). We had a blast at the ball and are so happy we went. We spent the night at the hotel (such a good idea) and slept in. I took a bath and read in a real bath tub! Johnathan surprised me by hiring our old driver for the day. It was so nice that we didn’t have to worry about driving (and parking).

at the ball

We wanted to do something fun. Dinner and a movie sounded lame. So it was decided that we would combine two activities. One that he would plan (the bag of fun) and one that I would plan (scavenger hunt). The week before our anniversary, I went to Greenbelt mall a couple of times and found different things that I could use: menu item, store signs, specific baby shoes, a dirty expat with a much younger Filipina (which was the easiest and quickest, btw. He read the card looked up, turned, and said “there’s one!”), etc.

We spent three hours at the mall with him figuring out clues and me doing crazy stuff to embarrass myself. The bag of fun included activities like: pretend sword fighting every time he said “en guard,” freezing in place every time he said “freeze,” finding a stranger and posing like a model in a photo with them, going into a store and speaking a language not from earth while buying something, etc.

posing like a model with a stranger

We were tired from walking for almost three hours, but at the end we were so happy. We had so much fun.  He then told me that we had something after that and told me what outfit to bring for it. We went to a older office building in Makati (on a Sunday, so not only is it old…it was practically abandoned), and up to the 8th floor. We walked into a photo studio and I was really touched, John hates (hates!) portraits. I knew that he was really sacrificing for me to do a photo shoot.

I was wrong…he wasn’t sacrificing at all.

He had brought along a huge popcorn bowl, a large bag of popped popcorn and plain white paper cups and straws for them. As we were getting acquainted with the photographer John asked him to show me his work. He makes surreal photos. He takes the person’s (usually just one) photo and photoshops them into the requested scene. He’s done a lot of athletes, but some non-athletes as well. When he’s done with the photo it has a elegant comic book-like look to it.

Here’s what idea they thought of for our photo, in a nut shell: we’re sitting in a movie theater and John is trying to steal my popcorn. After shooting for about 40 minutes with different ideas on how to convey it, we came up with the one that works the best and settled on our favorite shot. He reserved the studio for two hours, so he also took portraits of each of us separately and just some regular ones of us. He also wanted to get in on a few, so he asked the guy from the studio to grab a couple of shots.

We had such a good time. It was a creative idea and I can’t wait to see the final photo. The amount that we paid includes a framed print that he’ll order for us and then we’ll also get all the other shots that haven’t been touched up.

We left there and John told the driver where to go next. Unfortunately where to go next wasn’t open on Sundays. He wanted to take me to a speakeasy we haven’t been to yet. Since that one wasn’t open, we went to the one that we’re regulars at and sat and had a cocktail and shared arancinis.

After our pre-dinner drinks we went to Sala. It’s a fine dining restaurant that we’ve been eying since we got here. I had an amazing steak and John quite enjoyed his pigeon. We had a celebratory glass of champagne with dinner and with the two drinks and our busy day I was practically falling asleep at the table.

After our yummy dinner our driver took us home. And I was happy. Really, really happy. I told John at dinner that it was anniversary #2 for me as far as enjoyment. It was such a fun day. Hm…how are we going to top it next year?!

About 12 year ago

 

I said “I do.” Not I will. I definitely didn’t like the trend of saying I will. I wanted to do the traditional vows and to say, I do. And I did.

And it’s been good, and bad, and great, and horrible. We’ve had our highs and our lows. We’ve thrown around the word divorce a few times but we’ve said we couldn’t live without each other much, much more. We’ve been together for longer than we’ve been alive and we know no other way to live than with each other.

In the past twelve years we have moved six times, lived in Minnesota, Texas, Virginia, Costa Rica, and Philippines. We had three children, each in a different place. We have done school (one of us much more than the other) and started building a career and a half (being a Foreign Service spouse is practically a career).

We’ve survived grandparents passing, and missed a ton of cousin weddings. We’ve watched our friends marry and start their own families (because let’s be honest – not many people are crazy enough to get married at 20). We’ve made friends that we love and we’ve seen marriages disintegrate. We’ve watched life happen together, and that’s how we like it.

We had an amazing anniversary this year (my 2nd favorite). I’ll have to tell you about it…next time.

Catch Up #2: Roatan Honduras

On Wednesday the 10th (our anniversary) we got up super early and creeped out of the house at 4:30am to make our flight at the San Jose Airport. We went to a special desk by the ticket counter, flashed our diplomatic passports and got a waiver for the exit tax, and made our way to the gate. I did a little shopping at the Cafe Britt store for a magazine to read, a magnet for my mother-in-law, and some bottled water. 

The flight to San Salvador was great, we had a really nice plane with TV's in the back of all the seats. John watched Date Night with Steve Carrell and Tina Fey, and I watched Valentine's Day (which I STILL haven't seen the end of!). After a 1 hour and 20 minute flight we were in San Salvador. We waited for a little bit and walked out to the next plane...a prop plane. I wasn't very happy about that at all. However, except for the noise, it wasn't as bad a trip as I expected. It wasn't nearly as bumpy as we thought it would be, and after about an hour and a half we landed on the island of Roatan.

Our B&B was ok. We got the top room (read: biggest), but it needed some work done on it, and we only had maid service one day out of five. We'll definitely go to Roatan again, but I think we'll stay somewhere else.

Unfortunately their rainy season was just starting, so we saw more rain than we would've liked. Fortunately for us we brought umbrellas! We did have a great time though. We had a guided tour of the island, just the two of us and our guide, it was awesome. The Eastern side of the island is very rustic still, but beautiful non the less. During the tour of the island we went to a restaurant called The Hole In the Wall. It's only accessible by boat, and is run by a couple of retired US Navy men. After lunch we went on a tour of the mangroves which were pretty cool, we saw some wildlife there, and we saw a cove where pirates used to hide.


We had a realtor take us out to look at properties that are for sale that would be good for renting out. We are very interested in owning this kind of property. With our lifestyle it would be the best way to own since we wouldn't be occupying it. Roatan is a great place to buy right now because it's still developing, and the properties are still very reasonably priced.

Then on day three the sun came out! This was perfect timing because this was the day we planned on going snorkeling. We had already made reservations at a spa for treatments and massages, and the owner said that we could go early and snorkel with their equipment, so we did. It was beaufitul! We had to swim out a ways to get to the coral, but once we did, we saw so many fish, and the coral was so great. The coral was really close to us, at times I thought I was going to cut my belly on it. After swimming back (and wanting to collapse because of how much work that was), we went to a restaurant down the beach from the spa and they gave us a free appetizer because we're guests at the spa and we had a good meal.

Then to the spa...ahh...it was so nice. We ordered a choloate wrap. Neither of us had done a wrap before, and it was very decadent. After we rinsed off, we got hour long massages. They were so nice! I had issues with my shoulders and neck, and I swear he worked on that area for over half an hour. John and I had a great time, and would like treatments again some day.

We had food at an Argentinian restaurant four times, the first two just being dessert. Their food was amazing though. We ate at the noodle hut once and had great asian style noodles, we had dinner and brunch at a seafood restaurant right on the water (the candle-lit dinner was actually on the deck that was over the water), come to think of it, the noodle hut was over the water, and the Argentinian restaurant was just across the small road from the beach.

On our last full day, we decided to swim with the dolphins. We did the typical encounter where we were in the water with the trainer and a dolphin. But after that we paid a bit extra and we literally swam with the dolphins. For 30 minutes with snorkeled with the trainer and eight dolphins, who wanted to play catch with us and seaweed. It was an amazing experience.

It was so nice for us to just have five days with us by ourselves. Meals were a breeze, since we didn't have anyone that needed help. We watched a lot of Glee, and a few old movies on their VCR. Thank you so much to my mother-in-law who made this possible!

The island is beautiful, and we really enjoyed our time. It was a great way to celebrate nine years together since for our 10 year anniversary we probably won't be going anywhere since we'll then have three kids. Three kids!!

Exhausted

I've been regretting this part of my return to home. On Monday night and Tuesday morning/afternoon I didn't feel like doing anything, so I didn't do anything - including the blog. We (Malachi and I) were in Dallas for almost five days and we were pretty busy. Most of it was just hanging out with friends - we both had a great time doing that. I'll try to make this summary quick.

Thursday: Malachi was an angel the whole day of travel (about 8 hours from door to door). I kept him pretty occupied with books and snacks and his toys on the first flight. We got in to Memphis a little early and had time for bathroom breaks and some phone calls. I made Malachi sleep on the next flight and tried to sleep but couldn't get comfortable so I read. We got to Dallas, got the rental car and headed to our friend's (wonderful Don and Rosanne) house. Another friend, Danielle, was there with her kids, one of them being one of Malachi's best friends. Then another friend of mine, Ginger, joined us after a little bit. They wanted to be there to support me because they had some bad news. They had to change the time and day of the shower due to a funeral for the father of a friend of ours. I certainly understood and wasn't nearly as disappointed as they thought I would be. We had a great time of playing catch up. Loved it!

Friday: Rosanne let me sleep in an hour while she and Malachi hung out. We didn't have any plans until 11, so we spent the morning chillaxin. At 11 we met a friend at Chick-fil-A. We don't have CFA here, so we were both very excited to have it! It was a lot of fun to catch up with Sam and hear about their new adventures. I meant to make plans for Friday and I did try, but it didn't work out. We ended up just hanging out at Rosanne's house. Danielle and her kids came over again so they played while we did more resting. I was still exhausted from the previous day of travels.

Saturday: John left DC at about 6am to come to Dallas for the weekend. We had breakfast plans in Dallas with our friend Holly. I was so excited to see her. After we got back "home" from breakfast we left to go back to Dallas to get a couple of friends, Cassie and Sarah, for a mini-shower because they couldn't make it to the re-scheduled one. We met another friend, Cassi (yes that's right, at the table sat Cassie, Cassi, Sarah and Sara), coming from Austin at a Mexican restaurant. That just happened to be the restaurant that John and his friend Chris had gone to. They had been there for just a few minutes when we walked in and went to our own table. We all said hi and then went back to our separate tables. The girls had a great time playing catch up and eating delicious Mexican food. The boys did to as far as I can tell. After lunch I brought Sarah home and met John, Chris, Holly (yes they're married) and their one month old son Stephen at Starbucks. We sat with them for at least an hour just talking and hanging out. It was a lot of fun, and Stephen was awesome. He just laid there in his mama's arms sleeping the whole time. Afterwards John and I passed a little time waiting for another time of hanging out with some friends. Eventually we made our way over to Cassie and Jason's house. Cassie, Cassi, Jason, Sarah, Ival, Isaac, John, and I spent a few hours that night catching up and having a great time. People started getting tired (three pregnant ladies!) so we left around 8:30. John and I put Malachi to bed right away and hung out with Don and Rosanne for almost three hours talking. More catching up!

Sunday: Church day! We were so excited to go to church and hear our Pastor speak. Malachi enjoyed his time at church with his old friends and so did we. I cried through out church because I missed it so much. After church we had lunch at our favorite after lunch spot with some friends. We went to Target for a short time then made our way over to my shower. The ladies had put together an awesome shower and I had a great time. I was so blessed by those who put together my shower and by all who came. John and I went from the shower to visit our friends Raul and Valerie. We hung out with them for a little bit and then went to dinner at one of our favorite BBQ places. I dropped John off at the airport so he could do homework and went do Don and Rosanne's. They were having a home group meeting so Malachi and I went to my room and I started packing. They finished their meeting and I went to visit with people I still hadn't seen. I stayed up to watch the Cowboys beat Philly.

Monday: I woke up excited to return home. Being excited for my return home made the morning happen kind of slowly. Ginger and her daughter came over for our last morning. Malachi and Rachel played nicely while the adults stayed in the living room and talked. Malachi and I left at 10 for the airport. I had to return the car, ride the bus, check the car seat, get through security and get us some food by 12:00 and I made it. Malachi had a pretty rough day this time. He was completely exhausted by this time from the lack of naps and the super busy-ness that this weekend was. Happily for me we got on the second plane and he fell asleep during the safety announcements. He slept almost the whole flight. It caused a bit of soreness for me, but it was a great break too. John met us at the airport and I was so happy to see him! Even though he came to Dallas, the time spent apart sucked.

Tuesday: Woke up with John and wished him a Happy Anniversary. We were celebrating 8 years of marriage on Tuesday. He gave me an awesome card - seriously hilarious. Then he handed me a second one. It was a gift card for a pregnancy massage, I'm very, very excited for it. Unfortunately I had forgotten to get him a card and I didn't know he was getting me a present so I didn't get him one. I was totally being lame. John went to work that morning and I tried to rest while doing things to get ready for the night throughout the day. Showering, doing hair, make-up and packing were almost all done by the time John got home from work. At 4:30 our friend came over to stay with Malachi that night.

We made our way to the hotel where I pulled out the pregnancy and anniversary cards and got us an upgrade to a Jr. King Suite. It was like a regular hotel room, but bigger. The size was great. We had some time to kill before going to dinner so we sat down to enjoy some TV and there was a knock on the door. The gentleman who checked us in and gave the suite to us sent up some champagne and chocolate covered strawberries with raspberry dipping sauce. It was delicious. I toasted our anniversary with him with a sip of champagne. We took a taxi to our restaurant and ended up there half an hour early, but they were very accommodating and sat us right away. When I made the reservation I told them it was our anniversary and I'd like a view of the capital. They were quite good at fulfilling this request. Unfortunately there was a large tree between us and the capital and I could only see white spots through the tree. I guess in a couple of months when all of the leaves are gone it'll be visible. Dinner was delicious! I've really been into potatoes lately so I think my favorite part of the dinner was the Yukon Gold Potato Puree. I totally over ate on the Puree. Then we ordered a very decadent chocolate dessert. Then our waiter brought us over another dessert, he said it was for the baby. We will totaly recommend this restaurant to anyone who wants a good steak dinner.

After dinner we made our way back to our apartment complex to a goodbye party for a friend. I didn't think I could make it through a movie so we decided to do this. She's moving to London on Monday, and I didn't want to miss saying good bye to her. We stayed for about 20 minutes before I started wilting. We headed back to the hotel and went almost immediately to bed. We got to sleep until 8am the next morning! That's not a huge deal, but we got 9 hours of sleep. It was awesome! We had breakfast at the buffet at the hotel and checked out. We made our way over to the Spy Museum. We had a ton of fun there! I also recommend this to anyone visiting the area. After that we headed home. We had a very fun time celebrating our 8 years together.

Ok, so this is probably the length of a short story. Hope it didn't put you to sleep.