Our Little Getaway - Jamaica

You can read my Tripadvisor post about our resort here.

You may remember this post about Mat and I planning a trip to Jamaica. A couple of weeks, we finally made our trip and the whole left me speechless.

Mat and I didn't really care where we ended up, we just knew we wanted to go somewhere. After 3 deployments completed in 3 years and another one only a year away, plus our 7 year anniversary (the itch!) coming up later this year, we knew that we need to take some time away, just us, and make sure that we hadn't lost that loving feeling.

Know what I mean?

I spent weeks researching and finding the perfect resort. This trip wasn't about where we went or what we did, we didn't really care to leave the comforts of our resort, we just wanted to get away.

I finally came across Sunset at the Palms and I knew it was perfect, he knew it was perfect, and we booked it.

The night before, we headed to San Antonio to stay with one of my longtime friends. We had an early flight (hello 7:25am!) and I was not looking forward to waking up early. I made sure we stayed as close to the airport as we could get! haha

Good morning, San Antonio!

Our itinerary took us to Atlanta and then Montego Bay.

I am obsessed with cloud and wing photos... In case you were wondering.

 After arriving in Montego Bay, we had a seriously annoying long line to get through passport control and customs. After almost an hour, we finally made it through, only to find out that Mat had to have a special health stamp since he had just gotten back from Afghanistan.

 Our first views of Jamaica were filled with, "Oh my God!"s and "Holy sh!t"s. The views were stunning.

After getting through both and then picking up our luggage, we were greeted by our transportation company that would be taking us to our resort.

This was our first view of Jamaica outside the airport.

We got pretty lucky, a friend of mine works at our cell phone company and he hooked us up with unlimited texting and data while we were in Jamaica. I found quite the humor in the trip. Text messages during our hour and a half trip went something like:

"Just FYI... They drive on the opposite side of the road in Jamaica. Try to refrain from calling your driver an idiot."

"So far I have seen a store called "All The Tings" and a bar whose tagline is "Come in here and get drunk."

To say that my first taste of Jamaica was anything but less than humorous would be incorrect.

The trip to our resort wasn't exactly pretty. There was a ton of litter and the towns leave a lot to be desired.

Until you get to the resort areas.

We arrived at our resort and we were immediately greeted with cold towels (that smelled amazing!), tasty juice, and the friendliest staff ever.

They really go out of your way to wait on you.

Right before we had left, I had sent the resort a message to request a king bed. They had sent a message back and asked if we were celebrating anything and I had told them that we were celebrating the end of deployment #5 as well as what we were considering a late honeymoon. They remembered this and had champagne in our room.

Between this, and just how beautiful the resort was, Mat and I had already decided that we would have to come back. We hadn't even been there half an hour.

1. Our room 2. The view from our front deck 3. The hammock on our deck 4. My day bed (where I spent a lot of time) 5. The little table on our front deck.

1. The daily activity board. You came here every morning to find out what excursions and classes were planned for that day as well as the theme for dinner. 2. Our cute little room key.

The cute little kittens were my morning entertainment

1. The view walking to our room (that's our treehouse straight ahead) 2. The view from the hammock of the mountains 3. The view of the resort gardens 4. Same as 3. I spent my morning watching the workers pick the fresh veggies for the meals for the day 5. Mat's hammock. That's where he spent a lot of time.

The resort was lush with flours and plants. I wish I had taken photos of all of the different ones but it would have filled an entire memory card. This place was gorgeous.

The pool and pool bar area. A lot of people wondered why I didn't have many photos. I just simply answered that I didn't want to bore people with hundreds of photos of my legs. We literally lounged and relaxed the whole time we were there.

The beach. I told you. We lounged.

My handsome breakfast buddy our first morning in Jamaica

Believe it or not, Mat and I actually did a few things. Xtabi is a cliffside resort not far from where we were staying. The plans were to snorkel and they had some you could rent, but we didn't realize it was cash only. We enjoyed the view and explored the caves.

Even though we didn't get to snorkel, the views made up for it.

He did get tired of me taking random photos of him but he loves me.

The resort offered free non motorized sport activities. The first one we tried were the paddle boats.

We couldn't get over how pretty the water was and how clear. The water was super deep, yet, we could still see the bottom.

Another picture of the man. You can tell that he is thrilled!

After a morning of paddle boating, we took the cooking class. We learned to make smoked salmon... Not that we eat smoked salmon, but the show was entertaining and the company was great!

Have I mentioned that the water is crystal blue and the beaches are sandy? And that it doesn't get much better than this?

The one thing that Mat just had to do was windsail. I was a little iffy because he had never sailed before. I kept telling him no (lessons were $20), but he finally convinced me that it can't be hard and he would wing it.

Yea. Wing it.

I'm glad that we did it, I'm glad that we made it back to shore in one piece and didn't have to have the rescue boat come tow us back to shore.

My super happy captain. Probably the happiest he was the whole trip.

I wasn't so sure...

 How we spent our last day in Jamaica... Me on the daybed and Mat in the hammock.

On our last night, we made reservations at the Chef's Table. I was entirely fond of the food, it's not stuff I am used to, but it was nice to get dressed up and experience it.

The appetizer was a smoked salmon stuffed with prosciutto and smoked cho cho. I don't normally eat salmon, but I did try it and it was really good. The soup was an Italian potato and cream corn soup. We had a salad with a fruity vingearette dressing, chicken and shrimp for dinner and a passion fruit souffle for dessert.

The soup and the chicken were my favorite part!

The next morning, we had to leave. Again. Bright and early.

 

 Atlanta at night.

We got into San Antonio at 1030pm even though our day had started at 750am. We went back to my friends house and woke up the next morning to pick up our littles from my parents. 

I know we missed them, but I think they were pretty happy to see us.

Don't let the boy fool you, he's in one of those phases where he hates photos!

So. That was our trip. We are definitely planning on finding a way to go back in the next few years. I would like to go back next year but I suppose we should do a family trip then... Le sigh!

What a Wirlwind

Do you ever feel like you're just drowning and you can't seem to come back up?

Yep, I am totally there. It's not a bad whirlwind, I really just feel like I can't keep up on housework. I feel like all I am doing is cleaning and then the Twinkie Tornado comes and destroys it all, and then I am left to clean it all up again.

I'm in that phase where homecoming is so close you can almost touch it, but so far away that it really starts to just annoy you.

My inlaws came down this weekend and the only thing we accomplished was a whole lot of shopping and cleaning out my garage. My garage was really bad, you couldn't even open the door that goes into the garage. I can now park my pretty massive SUV in there!

I found these ugly green things at Hobby Lobby. They were on sale for $4.50 and I saw a lot of potential in them. 

Pretty ugly, eh?

Now they look like chocolate. Please don't judge my mantle, it's a work in progress :)

Remember the pre-deployment photos I posted about? I got them printed professionally and I am so incredibly in love with them.

These are 10x13's and a very important piece of a very special project that I'm working on. It's not going quite the way I had hoped but I have now made plan C!

8x10s and 4x6s. My poor frames had been so neglected and now they're all filled up with new pictures. The last time I had pictures printed, the twins were 7 months old. They're now 3 1/2. Whoops!

And this is what happens when you let Hayley pick which picture goes in what frame. Someone is clearly in love with herself :)

Let's see... What else?

Not only do the kids have their homecoming signs done, mine are 98% done. just need to glitter it up! This was a group Facebook effort to decide what would be appropriate and I am so thankful for my friend Megan who told me to use the phonetic alphabet.

My lovely 3 year old put my new jeans on and said, "Look mom, they fit," and then proceeded to hop around the house like they were a sack of potatoes. Crazy girl.

My husband and I recently had our photo in Times Square as part of the Axe Kiss for Peace Campaign. It was pretty cool to see our photo in Times Square. PS You can follow me on Twitter, here

Went on a small shopping spree with a friend and stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings for some lunch. Took a selfie with the boy!

The blonde is mine :) This is how the boys felt about our shopping trip. Can you believe that my kid is older than my friend's son by a couple of weeks yet, he's such a shrimp compared to him! haha

It's the year of the owls and I made a couple of owl purchases this week! Everything but my new welcome mat came from Hobby Lobby, the welcome mat came from Walmart!

And last but definitely NOT least, our trip to Jamaica has been booked. You can read about how and why we chose Jamaica here. We decided to go on this trip a few weeks ago and narrowed it down to Sunset at the Palms in Negril, Jamaica. We didn't want to book because Mat's time frame to come home keeps changing pretty drastically, not just a few days, but by weeks. Every time I would check websites to check price and availability, the price kept going up and one website even showed that they had no availability. I was starting to get severely depressed. This is the resort we wanted. We had to have it. Finally, I called our FRG leader, told her what dates we were looking at, and she told me that they had a cruise booked for the exact same dates that Mat and I had been thinking about. That was enough, we booked it, bought the insurance, and I was even able to schedule my massage. That was mandatory! :) Now we're just talking about what we want to actually do in Jamaica. I can not wait to share this trip with everyone!

I am hoping things slow down a bit so I can keep this ol blog updated more often, but with it being this close to homecoming, I'm not making any promises :)

Jamaica

Mat and I have decided that after this deployment, he and I are going to take the honeymoon that we never had. After 3 deployments in 6 years and another 9 month in less than a year (yup, we already know he's leaving next February and he's not even back from this one yet) we decided now was a better time than any. We knew we wanted some place tropical, but we didn't really care where. We were more concerned with the actual place we would be staying.

We started out by having our only requirement being that the resort be all inclusive. We don't want to leave the resort, we don't have to worry about transportation, food, etc.

I spent a few days looking at resorts in Cozumel, Cancun, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, and Riviera Maya as those seemed to be places that were more in our price range.

I looked at hundreds of resorts and they were beautiful. I couldn't believe that we would be making a trip like this, never in my wildest dreams could I have ever imagined that we would be able to afford such a trip (and honestly, we can't. We can, but we can't. Does that make sense?) The resorts were absolutely breathtaking. I drooled.

But then I got to thinking, most of these resorts have at least 100 rooms, that's the possibility of hundreds, if not thousands, of people and their kids running around. We want this trip to relax, have no worries and just reconnect with each other. Those resorts were not going to work for us.

So then we set a new requirement. Not only must the resort be all inclusive, it had to be less than 100 rooms and adult only. Not adult only as in nudity, but no kids allowed. We aren't bringing our kids on this trip and we definitely don't want to have to deal with other people's children.

So here I was with a small budget an almost impossible wishlist. I was feeling really overwhelmed and then I remembered a few years ago when Mat saddled me with a challenge; find an all inclusive cruise for 2 adults, 4 children, that stopped in Athens and Santorini for under $2000. I remember how many late nights I spent scouring the web looking for a cruise and all of my hard work paid of. I didn't give up. I wanted this trip more than anything in the world.

Here I was, on the website my friend suggested to me, looking at location after location. Then I put in Jamaica and the very last resort that was listed was absolutely perfect. Let me give you a little taste:

I started reading the hotel and I knew it was perfect for what we were looking for; 66 rooms, adult only, beautiful beach, all inclusive. But then, it came down to price. I just knew this place had to be out of our price range. I plugged in our tentative dates (we don't have block leave dates so we're waiting) and was completely amazed when I saw the price. It was in our price range! I immediately sent it to Mat and the handful of people who knew we were planning a trip. I kept reading reviews and they were all amazing, everyone had such an amazing and relaxing experience. I had to have it.

I had to wait patiently but Mat finally was able to look at it (go Afghan internet!) and he agreed that it was more than perfect. And that was that. The trip went from "maybe we can go somewhere if the price is right," to "as soon as we have leave dates, you book that shit and you book it fast."

I am so excited to sneak away with my husband and just relax, leave the cares behind. This has been a rough deployment for me, I have had to deal with more than I have on previous ones, and that says a lot considering that the twins were sick for 3 months and in and out of the hospital on the last deployment.

Here are a few more pictures of the resort and make sure you check it out here: Sunset at the Palms Resort