Florida and the Bahamas

YOLO.

I hate the term, but I love the sentiment.

You only live once, so why not spend all your money to hang out on pristine Florida beaches and cruise to the Bahamas with your friends?

YOLO, guys. YOLO.

Ok I'll stop using that dirty word now.

But for reals, we were in heaven for like 10 days in August. We rented a house through airBNB from this Russian lady. It had a pool and a little eating area where we had dinner every night. We went to the beach almost every day and soaked up the sun. And Matt surprised me for my birthday with tickets to the Killers concert in Miami! Oh man, I am hard to get excited, but I think I jumped up and down in sheer joy when all my favorite songs came on.

On our cruise we also went to the beach every day. I wish we would have gotten to see a little more of the Bahamas, but we didn't want to go on any of the excursions. Matt, Cari and Johnson all served in the Philippines, and there were so many Filipinos working on the ship. We made friends with one of them, who became our waiter every night. He told his friends about the 3 tall white Americans who knew Visaya, and they told there friends, and pretty soon they had talked to almost ever Filipino on the ship. It was pretty cool to see them speaking a crazy language that almost no one in America knows.

At our first stop, we found our way to the beach and listened to island music on the beach for hours. In Nassau we went to this amazing pristine beach with beautiful waves and lots of men shouting to us about renting wave runners. On the private Norwegian island, we rented snorkels and snorkeled around a bay with artifacts from an old ship wreck.

At night on the ships we would swim, go to fancy dinner with the Filipinos, watch amazingly cheesy cruise shows with dancers and hosts and lame jokes and awesomeness. And we may have gotten WAY into playing BINGO. YOLO.

The best part about vacation is that you get to forget about the duties and worries of normal life for a few days, which I'm grateful for. And I got to spend some quality time with my busy husband. Plus, it's always great to go to a new part of the world and find out how other people live. That part of traveling is invaluable to me.

Now we're back and working hard. I'm starting to like my new writing job a lot more, and Matt is focusing on his fishing business. He even has Groupons and AmazonLocal and CityDeals accounts where a lot of his business has come from! We help out Matt's sister and brother-in-law at their new old house at night. They bought a 100 year old house and are fixing it up! It's pretty fun.