Our 5th and Our 1st

Mike and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary on Friday.  I have so many feelings about this milestone…mostly I'm happy we made it to five years.  Without killing each other…or quitting.  To celebrate we agreed to leave Blip home with Richelle and spend a few days just being married again.  

I keep Richelle's boys at least two long weekends every year so she and Anthony can leave town and just be married.  She always told me how much they needed those weekends away together…and now we know how much we needed to spend some time away from Blip to just be with each other.  We will definitely be going away with each other more than once every couple of years.  We are doing a REAL vacation next time…probably a cruise.

Anyway…we struggled with where we wanted to spend our weekend.  We've been talking about it for a few months, but every time we came up with a new, fun place…it got vetoed for one reason or another.  Seattle was our first choice.  Turns out November is the rainiest month of the year in the Pac NW.  So that deleted Portland off the list…and another little town closer to the coast in Oregon was also crossed off.  Denver was another idea, but when we looked at the average temperature for November…and it was in the 30's…yep- vetoed.  Both of us agreed that freezing to death didn't sound very anniversary-ish.  

I looked into several warm beach destinations, but airfare was out-freaking-rageous for all of them.  To fly from Phoenix to Cabo was nearly $800 for one roundtrip ticket.  We flew there a couple years ago for under $400, so that was out.  When the countdown continued to get closer and closer…and our plans were still nonexistent (other than the fact we were doing SOMETHING), we had to make a plan…any plan…just A plan.

We talked about going to San Diego…and neither of us objected, so I started looking at hotels.  Everything was super expensive…or sold out.  We wanted to stay downtown, but that was not happening for a reasonable amount, so I booked us a room at the hotel I always end up at- the Marriott Mission Valley.  Rooms are cheap, hotel is great, location isn't bad…they just need a few more restaurants close by.

Friday finally came…and we were already exhausted.  We slept in later than we planned, but Mike got home late, and I was up late getting the house in order.  We finally dropped the baby off with Richelle around noon and headed toward San Diego.  

One of Mike's biggest complaints about our Summer trip to San Diego was his boredom in the car.  The baby was asleep or watching a movie on the iPad…and I spend almost the entire trip deleting pictures on my phone and making sure Mike had good driving music.  

I decided I didn't want Mike to have the same complaint, or for him to ever feel like I was ignoring him the entire trip, so I found some questionnaires on Pinterest and printed them out for us to do in the car.  I didn't get them out until we were leaving Gila Bend…and we spent the next couple hours asking and answering the questions.  It was fun, and I think we each learned a few new things about each other…it kept our minds busy, but we were completely involved with each other. I will be doing something similar for every road trip we take from now on.

We arrived in the evening…and we were tired, but happy.  After we checked in, we went downstairs for some food.  We ended up agreeing not to do anything fancy that night since we were exhausted, so we ate at the hotel and then watched a movie in our room.  We went to sleep fairly early…and slept in nice and late. I was up for a while before Mike was, but I knew how tiring the last few weeks have been, so I let him sleep. 

We spent a couple hours down near the border at my favorite outlet mall.  I only wanted to go there to get some long sleeved shirts for work, but ended up finding my favorite dress pants with belt loops too!!  We also found a cute pair of navy blue Converse for Blip…who doesn't need a pair in every color?

We left the outlets (which were CRAZY busy) and went back to the hotel to eat.  We didn't change the clock in the car…so we thought we got there just in time for happy hour ($5 appetizers), but nope…we had another hour to wait.  We ordered a couple things, ate, and were fast asleep long before that hour was up.  I am not a napper…naps make it even harder for me to get to sleep at night, so I just avoid them.  I slept for four hours!!  Mike said he did too, but he did wake up a couple times…like when his alarm we set for two hours went off.  He said I was out cold, so he let me sleep.

I drug my tired butt out of bed and into the shower.  We got all dressed up for the first time in a long time…it was SO nice to get ready together like the old days.  No little Blip running crazy while we throw ourselves together as quickly as possible. We wanted to take the trolley (their Light Rail) downtown like we did last time we stayed at that hotel…so we walked to the trolley stop just behind the hotel.  

As we were buying our passes…the trolley came.  The stupid machine took our first $5, but wouldn't accept the second $5 bill, so we cancelled the transaction to start over, but the trolley was leaving before that could happen.  We figured it wouldn't be long before the next trolley arrived, so we finished buying tickets, and found a seat.  That dumb machine ate our $5…no refund and no ticket, but the worst part was that we sat in the freezing cold for 30 minutes…and no trolley.  Two came for eastbound. Two losers walked by smoking weed…but no trolley for us.  

We finally decided that we were done.  We had gotten such a late start (because of our nap), even if the trolley came right that second…we were going to miss all the restaurants we were interested in going to. We ended up walking back to the hotel and getting our car…we found a restaurant close by and figured it was that or nothing.  The Joe's Crab Shack in San Diego was always good before, but this trip was not all that.  We enjoyed each other's company at dinner, laughed at our bibs and our messes, but decided to skip dessert there and head across the parking lot to BJ's Brewery for pizzookie.  Well…that was a great idea, but they were closed…10pm on Saturday in Mission Valley.  

We went back to the hotel to get dessert from the bar menu, but their menu sucked.  So we went upstairs and celebrated without dessert.  Turns out no dessert was just as good as finding dessert.

The TV was on for awhile, but I/we just went to bed after we made plans for Sunday.  Although the history of cage fighting IS a thrilling thing to learn about, sleep sounded better.   So sleep we did…until about an hour later than planned. (See a pattern here?)

We decided to try Hash House for breakfast/brunch and then go take the tour of the USS Midway.  Hash House had about 50+ people waiting out front…in line, so I looked up another place to eat nearby.  We ended up at Snooze…the wait there was only 1 hours and 15 minutes instead of the 1 hour and 30 minute wait at Hash House.  We laughed at this, but decided just to stay at Snooze.

The food was really good and not too pricey.  We were in the Hillcrest neighborhood…and loved, loved, loved it!!  All the good places to eat were nearby, including the pizza place voted #1 in the country recently (or so said the guy we stood and waited in line with).  We ordered our food, and waited patiently…when it finally came we were not disappointed.  It was a little on the sweet side for us, but still delicious.  I think ordering a side of hash browns would have helped even the sweetness out a little, but we were both happy.

We left breakfast (our cheapest meal thus far) and made our way to the Midway.  We grabbed our headsets and toured the ship on our own at our own pace.  We spent a few hours wandering around the ship…gasping at the space they had to live in.  You'd have to promote immediately or at least as soon as possible.  Maybe that's the idea..??  I don't know, but I do know I'm not sure how thousands of grown men do it.  Talk about claustrophobia being an issue.  Yikes!  We were thankful to be able to take the tour Veteran's Day weekend…almost all of the volunteers were retired military.  I love that generation…the best one this country's ever had.  I'm sad we are so far removed from so many parts of what that generation stood for.  I'm also thankful for the many steps forward we've taken…just not all of them have been in a good direction.

The tour ended, and we were hungry.  We ended up at that pizza place our new friend told us about…Bronx Pizza.  We ordered a few slices and enjoyed every single bite before we headed back to the hotel for a bit.  That night we agreed to go see a movie together…since we rarely get the opportunity anymore.  We saw Captain Phillips…for $12.50 each.  I couldn't believe it!  Oh well…the movie was really good (even after being ripped off).

On our way back to the hotel, I told Mike I wanted dessert…still.  Mike stopped off at the Cheesecake Factory we saw as we were passing it…the perfect place for dessert.  Now it had been hours since our shared pizza and no snacks at the movies, so we ordered an appetizer…and then Mike ordered cheesecake.  I wasn't really in a cheesecake mood…I really just wanted ice cream, so I ordered a Sundae.  It FINALLY came out…melted.  And it was awful.  The server even knew it wasn't good, so she took it off our bill…that was nice of her.  I guess me having dessert was not meant to be…

We had another good night of sleep, and woke up happy to get ready for the car ride home.  I really missed my son by Sunday. I think we both did…not enough to leave at 6am, but we did miss him.  We both said how glad we are that we left him for a few days, so that we could reconnect and just be together…no stress.

I took Tuesday off to get the house back in order.  I had almost everything taken care of Monday night, so I spent Tuesday morning running errands…and Tuesday afternoon hanging out with Blip.

Marrying Mike has been such a blessing in my life.  I love him with everything in me and then some…I wanted to marry him the first time I saw him.  Little did I know a bunch of "stuff" had to be worked out before we could even date each other, but that "stuff" did work itself out…and I am thrilled to be Mike's wife. We both have more to learn about being married, but I'm so proud of how far we've come since those first few awful months.  Yep…that's what they were.  Awful.  And painful.  And hard.  And I'm glad we stuck it out…and figured out how to be married.

I'm so thankful to have a true partner in Mike.  He really is my best friend…and I want to call and tell him all the good stuff and all the bad stuff, so I don't have to know any of it alone.  He is an amazing father to our son…and I know I have fallen in love with him in a completely different way since Blip was born. He is so loving, kind, and sweet with Blip…they rough house and tickle and giggle constantly.  Their laughter fills our home with the more joy than I knew existed.

I want Blip to know how much I love his daddy…and that I will never give up on our family.  I can't wait to have another baby. I want to experience all of it again (except the huge, very painful, nearly exploding ovary part…I'm cool without reliving any of that).  I am excited to start expanding our little family.