officially freaking out

My mind has been in denial since February that Joey and I are going to live apart for approx 154 days...it finally became real for me yesterday...yeah I am officially freaking out. Yesterday we sold our bed and blew up our air mattress to sleep on that night. That's when it hit me that Joey wouldn't be sleeping next to me, sitting in the same room as me, watching tv shows with me, eating with me, etc with me for a long time.

Obviously I started crying laying on our plastic smelling "queen size" air mattress. Joey being the great comforter he is told me that I don't need to cry, it won't be that bad. Not the big hug/mutual cry sesh I was looking for, but he's right. We are both going to be crazy busy with school, and will be having tons of skype dates, texting olympics, phone calls, visits (hopefully more than just Thanksgiving!)

I think as hard as this experience will be, the next few months are going to be good for us. I am SO excited for December to come so I can get down to Texas ASAP, but I am going to enjoy my last few months as a Sconnie too. I am experiencing so many emotions right now its ridiculous. I don't want Joey to leave, but then I do because that means we can see each other sooner. I am excited to leave Madison to be back with my man, but I am going to miss Madison terribly! I am ecstatic to graduate college (finally), but I am sad to be ending that chapter in my life!...grad school??maybe...prolly not...wanna have babies before I'm 40.

Anyhoo Joey packed up the wagon to the rim. He is all set to head to the Big-A state of Texass. Luckily Gertie was there to help him pack because I have been working on my online class 24/7! Thank you professor who I will not name that assigns far too much work for a summer course!

Gertie:"no dad that box goes over there, and don't forget my tennis ball."

Gertie the co-pilot

Texas Bound!

Tomorrow morning I might not be as optimistic as I am right now about this situation. Luckily I have lovely friends to take care of me and take me fencing tomorrow as a distraction! En Garde!

Costa Rica: morning runs

After crashing and sleeping like babies I was up at about 5:50am and couldn't go back to sleep. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. I wanted to explore! I went for a run to check out the area and get my sweat on. Oh boy did I sweat! Humidity has a whole new definition there.

Our hotel had a beach just down the hill from the property which you had to hike through the rainforest for about five minutes to get to it.

 I checked out the little beach that I had to myself and after made my way back to the main road where I ran some crazy steep hills. The roads here are super steep which made for a great workout. After my run I cooled down walking around the resort checking out where we were staying. So gorgeous!

Costa Rica: getting there

ok I decided to recap the trip, but I won't bombard the posts with billions of photos and I will keep the posts short. I'm mostly doing this so I have this trip documented somewhere. Our journey started out with breezing through check-in and security at the Madison Regional Airport. We had a hotel in Orlando booked to spend the night for our overnight layover which wasn't ideal, but no problem....but our luck decided that we couldn't get to Costa Rica that easily.

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 5:30. 5:30 passed, 6:30 passed, 7:30 passed...still in Madison. We had boarded the plane only to be kindly asked to deplane because the flight crew honestly had no idea when we would be actually leaving Madison. There was only one mechanic at our little airport and we needed him to pass off the aircraft so we could have the clear to go. APPARENTLY there was another plane that needed his assistance more...for about 4 hours. We got food vouchers ate some bar food, and kept on waiting when finaly we were called to board the plane!...again!

We made it to Orlando around 1:30am. We cancelled our hotel reservations because we didn't want to pay to stay in a hotel for 4 hours. We didn't feel like sleeping on the floor either. We ended up getting a room at the Hyatt Regency in the Orlando airport. I was pretty excited we got to stay here because growing up going to Florida every summer I have been in this airport LOTS, and have always wanted to stay in this hotel!...I was a weird kid.

MURPHEY! We were so tired at this point haha.

 Joey tried to get a deal since we were only spending half a night in a room. The concierge gave us a conference room for cheap. Inside the room they opened up a Murphey bed for us. It was awesome. The conference room had everything a regular hotel room had so it worked out perfect.

We slept for 3 hours and got up around 4:30am to go through security for our flight to Miami, then finally to San Jose Costa Rica! When we got there we met up with Joey's parents and his younger sister Kimmie. From there we got our rental car, and I was desperately trying to find some wifi so I could turn in my homework. I didn't realize we still had a 2 hour drive to the town we were staying in, and I needed to get my paper in by 5:00 Madison time (stressed). Luckily there was a Denny's just up the road from the car rental place! I camped out there while submitting my Rhetoric of Religion final.

so happy to have homework while on vacation!

After what seemed like forever getting our rental car we were on our way to Manuel Antonio! If any of you have driven in Costa Rica you know what a crazy adventure that can be! Luckily we had a GPS to guide us along the way. There were crazy bends and steep hills on super narrow roads. All of a sudden we would whip around the corner to find ourselves at a one lane bridge...or be going up a road that would have been a freeway exit in the States, but here it was both an exit and a road you could drive up? It was crazy but made it really fun. Getting to Manuel Antonio was only supposed to take a couple hours, but there was construction along the way that made the drive take FOREVER!

It is winter in Costa Rica right now so we experienced a few showers. It was coming down so hard at one point I thought we were going to get washed off the highway.

When the rain stopped we saw the most beautiful sunset behind us. I was deciding at this moment that this trip is going to be amazing.

After driving through the most curvy, steep, and narrow road I have ever been on somehow we showed up at this beautiful place. Finally we could say we made it! The hotel staff scooped up our bags and gave us some delicious mango juice stuff and scented towells.

 We got a tour of the resort grounds and got to our room. There were chocolate covered strawberries waiting for us! They were delicious...until I saw that hundreds of little bugs thought they were delicious too. We got the treats out of our room ASAP. After all this traveling I was ready to crash, but I had to get some more homework turned in before the midnight deadline rolled around. I did my homework on a porch over looking the pool and ocean...not too shabby. As soon as my homework was turned in I crashed. We slept like babies.

Sorry it was still a long post. meh don't read it if you're bored lol. That was day 1!

Pura Vida

We are back! Seriously one of the best vacations I have ever been on. I love Costa Rica! There is something so different about this place that I can't get over. I think I would pick Costa Rica over Hawaii...crazy I know! The people, the food, the scenery, the waves, the wildlife... I kinda fell in love with this place.
Spoils: postcards of traditional costa rican dishes with recipes on back
            chocolates:choc covered coconut, choc covered almonds, coconut chocolate stick thing...I love chocolate and coconut.
            coffee (for the neighbors) made my bag smell like HEAVEN
             2mil colones which is like $4? I dunno I never figured out the money system there. They usually took american dollars anyways
            coffee flavored goats milk soap
            sea shell shaped like a ring-sort of fits on my pinkie finger
            amazing memories *not pictured ;)
I will prolly post more pics of the trip later. I already put them all on fb I don't want to make you guys sick of seeing my pics since most of you are my fb friends anyways.
Only 6 days left with my Joey! GAH! Kinda freaking out, but at the same time totally chill about it. It is a weird feeling. Happy to be back on the blog though. See you soon folks!

M.I.A

I've been MIA...and I am going to be for a while more too. School has of course been the main culprit for my absence. Have a final today then have to type a take home essay on the fly so I can get packed and clean our house before we go out of town this weekend. This week is crazy!...not cray...which is actually kray....which actually means hard to find. FYI (urban dictionary). While I am MIA enjoy this M.I.A music video. It is one of my favorite songs ever. Her newer song "Bad Girls" is good too, but this one just always makes me happy.