Vacation to paradise.

We're back!  

So if you've been following you may have noticed that things have been a little....tense lately.  My husband thought it would be a great idea if the two of us got away from it all.  I admit, I was not for it at first.  There were so many things to take care of before going on vaca, and I felt guilty leaving the kids, even though I knew they'd be in great hands with the grandparents.  But, things had been stressful and I figured it might be good to get away from it all.  And so, off we went.

We spent the week in Key West.  Now, we did not fly, we drove.  I thought it was a little crazy, but Hubs assured me it would be easy-peasy.  The drive down was not horribly awful.  We left at 6:30am and I slept for most of it.  In fact, he drove until we hit Florida.  Yes, that is a hell of a long way to drive, but he did it.  I drove for 3 hours in Florida but then he took back over once we hit Miami area.  The drive back, not so easy but I'll get to that in a few.

The trip overall was very nice.  We went to a lot of bars, a lot of favorites Hubby had frequented in the past.  But there's only so much time (and money!) you can spend in a bar.  We also did spend lots of time at the beach, but I really wanted to see more of the island and hear it's history.  We took a little train tour of it and that was kind of neat and spent a freaky moment in the grave yard.  Yes, we went down to the cemetery because it's supposed to be haunted.  We got there and it was chained up and we couldn't get in, HOWEVER, when Hubs went to take a picture of the plaque outside on the gate, his phone froze up and then turned itself off.  No joke!  And, maybe even more freaky, was that once he got it back on and we plugged in the directions back to the hotel, the stupid thing kept messing up and giving us directions back to the cemetery.  It was a little creepy.

My favorite part of the trip was our last full day.  We took a charter out to the reef and snorkeled.  I loved it, although I was a bit nervous.  I'm not a good swimmer and even with my flotation device I was worried at first.  But, it ended up being great.  I didn't see anything crazy out there, although Hubs saw two barracudas.  Then we got back in the boat and took it over to a sandbar.  We kayaked over to the sandbar and sunned on it while enjoying alcoholic beverages (or Pepsi for the kids that were there). It was a lot of fun, and I could have spent all day out there on the sandbar and out snorkeling.  I got horrendously burned though from it.  It was hurting before the night was over and I had Hubs put Aloe on my back and it hurt so bad I was almost crying.  I googled (where would we be without the world wide web???) and since I didn't have vinegar, I laid down on the bed with a wet washcloth draped on me.  It really did help.  The next morning it was still tender but not too bad.  I know when it peels it's going to be nasty though.

The drive home was horrendous.  We drove down coming through Atlanta and central FL.  However, the GPS on the way home had us going up the Atlantic seaboard.  OMG, what a long freaking drive.  Before we left, I had told the Hubs that we needed to pull over at a hotel and get a few hours sleep.  Well, at about 1am he pulls over into a rest stop.  Not exactly what I had in mind!  I curled up on the front seat and he was in the back.  It was awful.  I was cold, then hot, then cold and boy oh boy, uncomfortable!  I somehow managed to fall asleep and woke up at 4am central time.  I started driving because I wanted to get home to my babies.

I drove through the rest of SC, all of North Carolina (BEAUTIFUL!!), and most of Tennessee.  We only stopped for a half hour to eat at a Cracker Barrel and that 4 hours of sleep at the rest stop.  Oh, and to get gas, of course.  The good thing is we didn't kill each other, but when I took over driving at Indianapolis, I was tired of sitting and just wanted to get home to my kids, my shower, and my bed.  I did okay until I got stuck in Chicago traffic and eventually I started feeling claustrophobic.  I admit that last hour home I was really, really grumpy in that car.  Never again will I drive that far, ever.

So, did the trip help things?  It did....although I saw some symptoms of depression pop out even down there from him.  Just proves my point that you can change the scenery but your worries still go with you, because they're in your head.