Puerto Rico!

It’s been a month since we returned from our amazing vacation to beautiful Puerto Rico!  We were so lucky to escape the winter during some of the coldest temps of the season…everyone kept saying it was negative 25 degrees, but we weren’t feeling that, HA!  We went to San Juan to celebrate our best friend, Morgan, as he turned the big 4-0!  It never ceased to amaze me during our time there how this one person that we are so fortunate to call our friend was able to bring no less than 25 people to an island in the Caribbean to help him party up this milestone birthday.  On the other hand, Morgan is one of the best people I have ever met and everyone loves to be around him, so it shouldn’t have surprised me at all!  Our other bestie, Brian “Cbass”, also joined the fun, and, in all the 20+ years I have known these guys, this is the first tropical island adventure we have had together, and it was a blast!  The photos really speak for themselves, so I have a LOT of them here!  We got to experience some firsts…our first-time paddle boarding (awesome!), our first-time snorkeling (so fun!), and Chris’ first time liking sushi!  It was also the kid’s first time spending such a long time without mom and dad at home, thanks to Grandma Jean coming to take care of them for us!  That was the entire reason we were able to take such a crazy, fun trip like this at this point in our lives, so YEAY GRANDMA!  This was Chris’ first airplane trip since our honeymoon over 10 years ago…so we were due for a little "adult only" fun in a far-off land!

The entire trip was scheduled to be 5 days away from home, and everything ended up a little nuts at the end.  You never think tragic events across the country will affect you…until they do.  We have seen via the media some horrible things (Pulse Nightclub, San Bernardino, Sandyhook, etc.) over the last several years, but that’s as far as we’ve got with them…seeing them on television or Facebook.  As we arrived at the airport ready to leave that Friday in early January, we were made aware that our flight was delayed and eventually cancelled due to the random act of violence at the Fort Lauderdale airport, which was our layover airport.  When you see on television that 5 people were killed in a shooting you might think, “how horrible for those 5 families”, or “thank goodness it was stopped before more were killed”.  Your heart sinks a little, you count your blessings that it wasn’t anyone you know, and you finish your laundry.  But when you’re there, and it’s affecting you even indirectly, as we were affected, your thoughts change a little.  And you start to think, “You asshole!  Not only did you tear apart the lives of these 5 people and their families, you terrorized every person that was there and they may never be the same, you created an unnecessarily stressful situation for everyone trying to get home, go on vacation, or just do their job at that airport and airports across the country and around the world!”.  This lasts for days, weeks, months, and for some, forever.  It’s thousands and thousands of people...if not in airports, than in the communities.  Thankfully, we were able to bunk up with friends for an extra night in San Juan and flew to Fort Lauderdale the following morning.  We were scheduled to spend 3 nights there before taking a flight to Minneapolis on Tuesday night.  My mom had a birthday party to get to on Sunday…a very important one as it was hers! She was able to bring the kids to a friend’s house for Saturday night, and at the same time she was dropping them off, we were driving in our rental car to Orlando where we were able to fly out Sunday morning and finally arrived home that afternoon.  Despite the stress, by the time we got home we were happy to see the kids, they loved their gifts, and we were basking in the memories of a fantastic vacation, and even got to hang out with a couple dear friends in Orlando...by happy accident.

Whatever the present moment contains, embrace it if you had chosen it.