Wow. December has been flying by.

Fortunately, Andrew and I were able to go on our 10 year anniversary trip! I was so sure we were going to have to cancel due to sickness, but it all worked out. The trip really reset me from the hamster wheel I had gotten on around needing to do a certain amount of things each day. We’d love to get away at least once a year sans kids and we can’t wait to take the kids on a cruise in a couple years. Our trip was a roundtrip cruise on Princess Discovery from LA to Cabo (not sponsored in any way at all). We had a great trip, and, once we got to Cabo, we had never been offered so many drugs in our entire life. We declined.

It was great quality time for us and was nice to get some calm away from the kids. I’m grateful my parents were up for keeping the girls. ANDDD Andrew and I hadn’t spent that much non-stop time together in years and at one point he was like, “you seem angsty”, to which I looked at him with daggers in my eyes and said, “I’m not angsty, it’s called emotion.” For our final two dinners I cried at both – once over having 3 girls to raise and feeling overwhelmed by the energy that is going to take and feeling like that is what I grew up with (two sisters) and it’s a lot. And then another time over my disconnection from reality because I can be so negative and Andrew’s disconnection from reality because he can be so positive – we really do balance each other out! Just like daily life the trip had highs and lows, but it was nice to do those highs and lows with different scenery and to make some new memories along the way.

I have so much to say about getting a break from the day to day with kids, but then having to come back to the intensity of the day to day with kids…maybe I’ll say all that in another post. For now, here’s some of our trip, if you’d like to see:

On the ship, the food was fine dining mixed with hospital food lol. It was okay. We live in Houston (which has amazing food), so I wasn’t expecting too much from cruise food, but there were some incredible meals! I didn’t take many pictures of the dining room dinners. If you paid extra to eat at the onboard restaurants, those were really delish, but some of them required reservations 9 months in advance…which seemed silly to me. Here are some things I loved:

I loved the museli at breakfast and had that every single day. I’ve been making batches of it since getting home. They also had espresso drinks on the boat, YAY! I love me my vanilla latte.

I ate more produce on this trip than I have in weeks! It was super nice having fruits and vegetables prepped and made without me having to lift a finger.

Greek salad perfection.

Salad + vegetable sandwich on really good focaccia + roasted bell peppers. My preferred way of eating taste preference-wise would be pescatarian most of the time and then having a burger and fries as cravings arise, so that is the pattern I found myself falling into on this trip.

Room service fruit plate one night before bed.

One night before bed Andrew ordered chocolate chip cookies. As a cookie expert, I can say with confidence that these were horrible. I just ate the middle out of one cookie…that is the best a bad cookie can do for you.

Eaten in bed while watching Date Night. I love that movie.

There were a couple GREAT meals we had. One was at Hacienda in Cabo. We’ll remember this meal for the rest of our life! If you watch Selling Sunset, this is the resort where the Oppenheim Group has their Cabo office at. I’d love to go back and stay there one day.

At this meal Andrew and I barely said anything to each other. Not because there was tension, but just because we didn’t need to say anything. We just held hands and enjoyed some really good drinks and really great food and enjoyed the comfort, ease, and spaciousness that being married for a decade can bring. We had been at the beach all day before this and I had stuffed a dress into our backpack in case we found a dinner spot. So I threw the dress on and the the whole experience was sun-kissed and go with the flow. Amazing.

Have you had octopus? I really like it. Andrew almost gagged when he tried it. The texture is like a combination of tofu and chicken – I love it. This one was slow-roasted and so good. Plus, there was a salad underneath it and the lettuce in it was so tender. I didn’t understand what people were talking about when they called a salad tender until I ate this!

Also at this restaurant I enjoyed quite a few margaritas. They were phenomenal. They were made with Lillet and apple…they were the best! Like a less zingy margarita. I’ve already been trying to recreate them at home.

Speaking of margaritas, I also found a new go-to drink: the margatini. It’s just a margarita that is shaken over ice and poured into a martini glass. It being ice cold and in a different glass than normal adds a little something something. I thought I invented a drink when I was describing it to the bartender, but he responded with, “that is a margatini.” Oh. Noted.

One great meal on the ship was at the pizza restaurant. Salad, pizza, wine and the best dessert from the trip…

Tiramisu! I don’t usually like tiramisu (soggy lady fingers…gross), but this was so good!

The last day we laid in bed and watched Everybody Loves Raymond episodes. We love Somebody Feed Phil, so it was fun watching these episodes back and seeing Phil’s influence in them. I was missing the girls, but not missing the intensity of parenting…it’s like drinking from a firehose! Many times feeling like I’m being waterboarded…like I’m a sponge that clearly has a limit of what I can hold, but I’m oversaturated and water is just continuing to pour over me.

And, that’s a wrap! Here are some final pictures to round out this post.