Lessons Learned (or Re-Learned) on the Cruise

1. The body is an amazing specimen. When you just have to keep going, somehow your body just keeps plugging along and can find energy and strength in hard to reach places. But when your body knows it can shut down for a while, boy, it really takes advantage of it. We spent the first 2 days of the cruise sleeping. Luckily, these were our "at sea" days, so we didn't miss anything exciting. We got on the ship at 4 in the afternoon and our dinner time was as 8. We slept all the way through dinner, until 11 pm, woke up and ate some pizza and went back to bed. 2 nights in particular, I didn't even change my clothes be fore falling asleep. I just thought I'd lay down for a bit and then we'd get up and do something. Nope. Just slept. No regrets.

2. You feel pretty darn good about yourself when you have 30 minutes of uninterrupted time to get ready in the morning. I found myself walking around the ship thinking, "I'm pretty cute!" and I'm positive that its because I had the time to "choose" what I was going to wear for the day and I wasn't constantly trying to hand Will random things to keep him occupied while I put on make-up.

3. The Olympics are awesome. We had satellite cable in our room, so we were still able to keep up with the Olympics and our favorite shows each night. It was so great to watch tv in bed.

4. King size beds rock. Each time we have the opportunity to sleep on a King, I always sleep SO well and I'm thinking that I can relax a little better knowing that I won't roll into Cort during the night. King Size Bed... someday you'll be mine.

5. Alcohol makes middle-aged people do really hilarious things. A few nights of the cruise there was dancing on the Lido deck and Cortney and I just stood and watched and laughed for hours. Watching that mix of people dance, most all of them with alcohol on board was hilarious. We have a few on video that we'll post soon.

6. Making Tequila is an interesting process. Yes, that's right, Cortney and I now know how to make Tequila. We went on a bus tour through Puerta Vallarta and one of the stops was a tequila factory. It was the best part of the day, if you ask us. We were with 2 middle-aged couples and part of the tour was getting all the free tequila shots you wanted and this was also a scenario where Cortney and I just stood and laughed. We have great video this this as well.

7. Cortney is still the coolest person I know. One day we were on the deck and music was playing and Cortney sang along to 3 songs in a row- every word. Now some of you may think you have this skill, but I assure you, you are not at Cortney's level in the "I know every song" game. The 3 songs were by (and in this order): Pebbles, George Strait, and RuPaul. I mean, really, who does that?

8. Hearing "I love you" never gets old. Its nice to have the time to say and hear it all the time. And holding hands is still really fun, even when you do it all day long.

9. Cruises are a blast. Cortney refers to the cruise as "The Natural Man Express" because you really don't have to do anything and you can sleep and eat all you want and there's no responsibility. It was a great week, something that we needed desperately. The entire time we just kept saying, "This is so awesome!" It will definitely be something that we think about often for a long time. Especially because it will probably be another 3 years or so before we can do this again.

10. In addition to "Mommy", my name is also Amy. I've found myslef a lot lately thinking to myself the the third person and referring to myself as "mommy" even in my thoughts. So it took some getting used to hearing "Amy" all the time for a week.