checked off: #19!

i won't lie, i completely forgot that this goal was on my 30before30 list, but I'm so excited to cross it off! #19 on my list was to visit maui for our 5 year anniversary.

we got married in maui on march 1, 2011. and since the very day we got married, we said we would go back in 5 years because we absolutely fell in love with the place. shortly after luca was born, we decided to make that goal a reality and book our trip. we debated whether or not to bring him along, and after living through a 15 hour travel day just to get there, it's probably best that we decided against him. we will definitely be returning with him sometime in the next several years...when he's ready to adjust to a 4 hour time difference, and a total of 9 hours on a plane...but that time is not now!


our week was filled with lots of maui brewing company bikini blondes, delicious food, sand in ALL the places, more sunblock than two people should go through, the worst music ever in our rental car (why maui? why??? get better radio stations!), dinners and drinks with great friends, and about 20 whale sightings. we did a sunset whale watching cocktail cruise on the 2nd night, and absolutely l o v e d it. we saw lots of mama whales with their babies and they were showing off the whole time. the sunset was beautiful, and the cocktails were way strong, so we couldn't ask for a better time.
we also ziplined in the mountains of maui, and even though I thought I was going to die on the first line, I braved it and had such a great time. that's something we definitely hope to do again on another vacation!
here is an overload of pictures for us to remember what a great time we had:

see full list HERE



on spending time together.

i mentioned a few posts back that my 1:00-10:00pm schedule started back up at work. this is always a little hard to get used to, especially because i really only work that schedule on mondays, tuesdays and every other friday. so it doesn't give my body time to adjust to normal sleeping hours, normal eating hours, normal socializing hours, and so on. but even worse - it makes it difficult to hang out with my husband. he's extremely busy at work and is part of a project that takes him out of town pretty often. which means that there's really not that much time for us to do things we get used to doing when i'm not training a new hire class - things like going for evening runs or bike rides together, spur of the moment indian food dinner dates, catching a concert together during the week here & there.
by the time i get home at 10:30, all wound up from the day, he's tired from working 10+ hours and somehow fitting in a work out or two (i'm telling you, he's a superhero).

so, we're making it a point to enjoy the little things & making sure that we can still set aside at least one date night per week, like we do when i'm not working this schedule. when i tell people we have a "date night" they usually say, isn't every night a date night? since we don't have kids, i guess that's the assumption. but really, we often do things separately during the week - he'll be at the gym late, i'll go have happy hour with some lady friends, he'll have a work dinner, you get the jist. we're not one of those couples who has to do every single activity together. so for us, it's always been really fun to designate our date nights at the beginning of the week and make sure that we make time to have drinks and cook a meal together, watch trash tv, or go to one of "our" restaurants, etc.

do you set aside a designated date night?

source

we're heading to dallas this weekend to see my family + celebrate my mom's birthday. i'm really excited to spend time with them since it seems like forever since i last saw everyone! i'm also hoping to see some long lost friends that i left back in dallas, so i'll report back on monday with some pictures.
i hope you all have a great weekend!

marriage

this post is just a long, drawn out way to say "thank you so much" to my husband.

we recently went on a trip for my birthday, and while there, we were discussing my 30before30 list with a small group of friends. when one of my oldest friends asked tucker what was on his list, he said:

"whatever is on her list. helping her accomplish her list is my goal"

swoon. just, swoon.

months ago, i posted about me being the 'realist' and him being the dreamer in our relationship. and while that's still the case, i think he's slowly converting me over to his side. (the dark side?) you know those moments when you set a goal but it's more of a fantasy? the ones that you never really plan on accomplishing, but it sounds pretty damn cool when you write it down or say it out loud to someone?

well, being with my husband, i've learned that those are stupid. that's right: stupid.

i'm tired of hearing people set these goals for themselves and never doing a single thing to get them checked off, or setting the goal and then completely forgetting about it. why do that to yourself?! why get excited and motivated by something to just let it slowly die away and get forgotten? i've realized that that's probably an easy thing for me to say because i have someone on my side that doesn't ever let me forget to put work in to my goals, & who is just as excited to see them checked off as i am.

so thank you, husband. you are the best.

my biggest hope is that all of my closest friends will one day get the equivalent of a tucker in their lives.

my better half series

i am back from the world's longest blogging hiatus!

so you would think that i'd have a really long, interesting post since i haven't had anything posted in over 2 weeks, but that's just not the case.

but what i do have to share with you today has made me smile a lot this morning, and has helped me compile a list of things i want to post later in the week. so this is what i've got for you (and if you're an avid blog-reader, you've probably come across this cute project already, but you should look at it again because it's just that good):

my better half series

some examples of what you'll see from the series:

it really combines a lot of things i love....photography + typography + hearing stories of happy couples. it's exhausting when you only hear the bad parts of a friend's relationship, no? it's always easier for people to see the bad than the good, but if you don't put work in to it, you probably don't deserve to see the good in the first place!

i'll be back later this week with a post, i hope you enjoy the my better half series as much as i did!

how a sitcom got me thinking.

I heard the above quote the other day while watching the show Modern Family with the husband. He immediately looked over at me and smirked, and I knew what he was thinking: he's the dreamer, and I'm the realist. HOW BORING AND TERRIBLE IS THAT? I see where he's coming from - I'm constantly reminding him to not be TOO positive in his thinking (for example, don't overshoot on estimating that holiday bonus we get at work...), but I do it because I'd much, much rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed. Not that there's really anything (too) wrong with being a realist, but I don't want to be a straight-up realist. I'd love to be a drealist. A dreamer who is realistic in her thinking. And maybe that's what this blog is about, anyway. So at first, I was thinking, "is my list too full of 'realistic' things, other than things I've dreamed of my whole life"? So I came to my blog prepared to bulk up my list full of ridiculous, almost unachievable things, but then I really read through my list again. I mean...I think it's kind of a dreamer mentality to assume that I'll be able to master photos the way my idol's take them, go to Greece, see the Northern Lights, visit Spain, learn to tango, become fluent in Portuguese and give birth in 5 years! If I met someone who did all of that in that amount of time, I'd definitely high five them.
For a while I struggled with seeing all these people I went to high school with (some of them younger than me) post pictures of their insane, world-traveled lives. I mean, people who couldn't form a proper sentence as a high school Junior were suddenly in Bangkok working at PR firms, or in Buenos Aires hosting their own TV shows. Really? How the hell did that happen? I'd see old friends of mine posting pictures from Australia and then no more than a week later, they were in Greece. Needless to say, I was a bit jealous. And when I say "a bit", what I mean is that I was foaming at the mouth. I had all of these travel dreams I wanted to achieve and either nobody to go with me (I'm scared to go alone...I've seen Taken. And Locked up Abroad on NatGeo.), or nobody I could count on to follow through on travel plans.
But then I met my husband. One of the things I told him I loved about him when we first started dating was that he doesn't just dream up things, he actually achieves them. Always. And even though we get made fun of for planning our lives 3 years in advance (and I'll admit, sometimes I wish we didn't have a plan yet for next November), I know that we'll get to my list. And I know that we'll get to his.
So, husband, thank you for getting me off the ground. And thank you for making this list seem as important as if it was your own.

(click here to see full 30before30 list)