Home Sweet Home

We are back from our babymoon, and we had a GREAT time!  The weather was wonderful, the resort was gorgeous, the food delicious and the relaxation plentiful.  Yet oddly, I'm happy to be home -- despite the laundry piles in our hallway and 1,000 emails no doubt waiting for me at work tomorrow.  I'm not usually one to relish returning home, especially after a heavenly escape from the frigid temperatures and never-ending snow that's been beating NYC for the past several months.  I've been known to try to extend our vacations on more than one occasion -- okay, every occasion.  I even once threatened to hide in the hotel closet when we were in Mexico several years ago and not come out until we missed our flight.  And I'll admit, when we found out that our flight home today was delayed by an hour, a small part of me wondered if it would be cancelled altogether and we'd get to stay another day!

But the truth is, I'm relieved to be home.  Now that I'm in my third trimester -- and certainly feeling like it -- I'm glad to be back home to my own bed, close to my doctors and a world class hospital.  Hopefully nothing will go wrong from here on out, and our little baby will stay snug inside me until s/he is "fully cooked", but just in case the unexpected happens, it's a good feeling to know that I'm home and just a few miles away from the excellent medical care I would need.

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Temperatures and lack of pool-side virgin cocktails aside, there's really no place like home.  ;)  Upon seeing the Empire State Building during our taxi ride home from the airport, I involuntarily breathed a little sigh of relief.  Plus, we have real NY pizza being delivered for dinner any minute, so that's a pretty good perk of being home too!

Of course I plan to write a post all about our trip, from favorite meals to funny quotes {there were some doosies!}, but just don't have the energy to do that tonight!

I hope you all had a lovely week, and I look forward to catching up with you!

Babymoon = Booked!

Shep and I looooooove to go on vacation.  We're certainly not certified jetsetters by any means, but compared to a lot of couples out there we've definitely had our fair share of trips together.  Some of my favorite places that we've visited together include:  Aruba, Napa, Mexico, Hawaii, Newport RI, Greece, France, and Turks & Caicos.

We realize that once baby comes along it's going to be much more difficult to travel, and we certainly won't be lounging carefree in a hammock on a beach with umbrella drinks in hand for a looooooong time to come....  We also won't be able to decide on a whim to fly to San Diego approx. 48 hours before departure like we did one summer several years ago {crazy, we know}.  Yes, babies are portable, and yes, families with children travel all the time, but it's going to be a lot more work and require a lot more preparation.  I do have a special knack for being able to fit 2-3 times as many pieces of clothing than a normal person needs into my suitcase at about midnight before we leave each time we go away, but babies require a LOT more stuff...

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We realize that our lives are going to change in a multitude of ways once our little one arrives, and while we'll surely miss our days of traveling carefree, it's a change we're trying to prepare ourselves for.  But that doesn't mean we can't have one final fling, just the two of us, before May arrives!!!  And a soft sandy beach with plenty of sun, shade, sapphire blue water, and available umbrella drinks {non-alcoholic for me!} sounds like the PERFECT way to enjoy some precious time together as a twosome.

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Planning a "babymoon" as they call it has been on our pregnancy to-do list for months.  {Just ask The Bump which yells at me each time I sign on for constantly being overdue on this and about 10 other items!}  But thanks to a combination of our work schedules, my propensity for indecisiveness/over-thinking things, my relentless nausea and the 100 other things that have been on our mind the past 3 or 4 months, we couldn't get it together.  That is, my friends, until this week!

Originally I wanted to go to St. Lucia.  It sounded like the perfect romantic Caribbean getaway, and neither of us have been there before.  I looked up a couple resorts, checked into flights, and as of a few weeks ago it was totally doable.  But then I had to research water safety, pasteurization practices, food menus, proximity to the airport, and try to seek via TripAdvisor opinions from pregnant travelers who'd been there, which took a while.  I didn't want to take any chances though.  When I finally narrowed it down to a resort that fit our criteria and that got positive reviews from other babymooners, the resort was sold out.  Through the end of March.  So were all affordable non-stop flights.  Ouch.  I wish I could say this is the first time something like this has happened, but alas it is not, and, if I'm being honest, it certainly won't be the last.  ;)

So there we were, in mid-January, with the clock ticking, pricing literally rising by the day, and having to formulate a new babymoon plan.  Well, I'm happy to say that surprisingly, after tears this weekend and an attempt to just give up -- we pulled it off.  Luckily, Shep snapped me out of my funk and back into the planning game.  This is our LAST opportunity for a trip together before baby comes, after all!

So, in about a month, we're going to....

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THE CAYMAN ISLANDS!!!  And I'm psyched!  We had to do a little finagling with dates and call my OB to double check that our travel dates were still copacetic {which they are} since we're going a little bit later than originally planned, but the plane tickets and hotel are booked and I'm sooooo looking forward to this trip!  Especially since the high temps around here have only been in the teens for what seems like years already...

Calgon, take me away!!!