We are Thankful...

This year, like all the years past, was difficult. This was one of the biggest challenges i was not looking forward to after we got married.

THE HOLIDAYS!!

That's right, the holidays. I love spending time with my family, but this is becoming more and more difficult to accomplish. Before Juju and i got married, we did celebrate our holidays together, but we still each favored our own family for the most coveted days/hours. I would spend the majority of the day with my family and at the end of the night i would stop over by Jujus family. It worked out, and we would alternate the 75/25 split we had going on.

This thanksgiving was our first attempt at the Holidays as newlyweds. We had 3 stops to make in one night. Our schedule was supposed to go a little like this- Buelas 3-6, My sisters 6-9 and Irmas 9-12. (+/- travel time) Perfect right? 3 stops, 3 hours each, no one gets left out. Its safe to assume we didn't make it to Buelas on time, matter of fact no one really did. Buelas got off to a late and slow start. We made it to Buelas at about 5:20. When we got there, everyone was still 'mingling' and no one had yet began eating. We eat and picked our secret santa. Around 6:40 i got a call from my sister letting me know they were ready to start dinner.

We made it to my sisters around 7:15ish. I tried eating as much as I could. I was already a bit full from Buelas. The funny thing is that i knew i had to eat, or at least attempt to, at 3 other places, but i couldn't resist. My sister had some mouth watering cheese potatoes and i refilled plate a few times with those bad boys.

Here are a few pictures of Thanksgiving...

Here is Juju and I at my sisters house.

Here is Mom & Dad with the kids ( lol, us), This was at my sisters houseHere is my beautiful Mom and my Daddy-O. They rarely take pictures. I think this is a real nice one of them.

So I left my sisters house, (juju had been picked up by his parents earlier) ran back home to get the pies and headed to Irma's house. I got there 'bout 9:45ish. *Note, i will not be mentioning that Mon severely injured me with my own earring at Thanksgiving, I will also not mention that i was bleeding profusely and i need to seek the attending nurse (maria) for medical attention. =-D Again i helped myself to a big plate of food. We played UNO slam ( i think that's what it was called) and semi sorta watched a movie..... i say semi sorta because me and maria were busy cuddling with....

That's right you guessed it! Adriansito! Isn't he so cute? He kept running his little finders through my hair.

Here is a picture of the me catching everyone off guard with my camera.

We left Irma's house around midnight since Juju had to work the next day.

This thanksgiving was very surreal. We left Irma's house and went home, our home. I am very thankful for many things in my life, both big and small. I am thankful for the silliest things too, like socks and bubble baths. But this year i was thankful for the fact that i had too many places to go to. Although it was a headache and it was a lot of logistics to configure, it was worth it. I was thankful for having a wonderful husband by my side.

SuperDawg!!

On the second night in chicago we decided to take a drive out to SuperDawg. Juju saw this place on an episode of "diners drive ins and dives" on food network. Im a fan of chicago syle hotdogs and im pretty sure Chicago makes them the best. So we called for our car to be take out of the parking structure and entered the address into the GPS and set off.

It was actually fater than i expected. Im glad we had the GPS otherwise we might have gotten lost. I took us about 20/25 mins to get there on the expressway. I was worth it though.

Superdawg is super cute, i know super corny, but it was. It was very retro looking and the fact that i was a drive-in really helped out with the retro feel. We both got superdawgs, which come niftly packaged in the box below. My box felt very heavy for its size, it was just about rounded off on every side. Once i opened up my box i found this.... One really squished bun housing a real good tasting hotdog.

The box comes packed with a bed of french fries, a grilled green tomato and of course, the superdawg. They were awesome, i love the taste of uncommercialization. Like when you have a burger whose flavor you dont immediately associate with a company, like, a whopper always tastes like a whopper. Don't get me wrong, i love whoppers, but i know what im getting (or at least what to expect) everytime i order one.

I digress, we split a chocolate malt and headed back to the hotel. We had to be up the next morning to check out and head home.

Our trip to chicago was a nice change of pace and a perfect way to celebrate my husbands birthday.

DreamSeats

After doing some shopping on Michigan avenue, we decided to eat lunch. Juju wanted to eat at the ESPN zone. Neither of us had ever been there. So we walked in and it was basically the biggest sports bar i had ever seen. We got asked if we were there to eat or play. Eat- we were both starving, and i think we had a very lite breakfast at Starbucks that morning.

The hostess, who had a thick accent asked something along the lines of blah blah seat? and i said excuse me? and she repeated herself blah blah seat? I didn't want to asked her to repeat herself again, specially since the last time really didn't help much. So i nod my head and smile and say sure. She then proceeds to walk us over to the Dreamseats. That's right. Dreamseats. If you've never been let me explain. They are basically individual leather recliners with a pull out desk-like tablet that serves as your table. They have built in cup holders and of course they reclined. Oh and did i mention these bad boys were situated in front of a monster screen the size of the entire wall? Floor to ceiling sports coverage everywhere.

Here juju is enjoying a 32 oz cold one, at 1 in the afternoon. I mean hey, i guess we were sorta on a mini vacay- why not? I also enjoyed a drink with lunch. We eat our delicious burgers and juj had another beer.

The nice thing was that we a) were walking and b) had nowhere to go. So bring on the drinks right? I mean it's 5 o'clock somewhere.

The Hubby's Birthday

This was our first official trip as husband and wife, well not counting our honeymoon- That would count as your first trip as newlyweds.

When i was planning our honeymoon we thought about spending the night in Chicago, seeing that we were flying out from O'hare, on the day of we got back to-well, um reality. Juju thought it was a great idea, he actually wanted to stay at the W Chicago Lakeshore. I looked into booking us a night but that came to a screeching halt when we found out we would be spending upwards around 300 dollars to stay there a single night. So we quickly put that idea to bed and decided to have my sis and bro in law pick us up from the airport and drive us home.

Juju was pretty bummed about this. I was the voice of reason in that decision. 300 dollars for a single night?!? I was totally not interested in shelling out $300. With that said, i felt bad, believe it or not. I mean i had chosen our honeymoon location and juju pretty much went with it. And all he wanted was a single night in Chicago.

I bet you think i caved right?

Wrong!! I actually went online at wor- ehem, at home, and started searching for deals at the W for Jujus birthday- which wasn't until the end of June. Lo and behold i found a room upgrade for 2 nights with a lake view for around 360. I know what your thinking, not that good of a deal... but um yeah sorta it is. For one, its 2 nights instead of 1 and in all honesty, i would have paid that and much more for juju.

I tried keeping it a surprise for as long as i could, i literally booked this trip in April. I eventually had to tell him so he could request his days off from work. So here are a few pictures from our Chicago trip.

Our view from the hotel. To the right is Navy prier.

The weather forecast was sunny and warm and instead it rained, it wasnt cold, but i wasnt prepared for rain at all. Still downtown chicago was beautiful.

I like how little juju looks compared to the world around him.

Last Day

The last morning in puerto rico was supposed to be busy believe it or not. Since we spent a lot of time being lost during the week we didn't get around to renting jet skis , which juj really wanted to do. So we got up, packed up our suitcases and had our breakfast. Our flight home was scheduled for the early afternoon so we wanted to get a few more hours of sun before heading out.

We got ready and headed down to the beach. We walked over to the Jet Ski rental place to find out they ran island time. According to their sign they opened at 9. It was shortly after 10. The guy behind the counter told us it would be a few minutes before they would be ready to take the first people out into the water, and even then, they had to wait to fill all the seats before the first round of people could go out. I was pretty bummed, seeing that it was very unlikely that people would be jet skiing that early in the morning.

So we made the best of the situation and laid out in the sun for a few minutes before heading into the ocean. After a while we decided to go into the hotel's pool area and enjoy the hot tub.

Here is juj sitting behind/under/next/hugging the water fall.

So then he said ok, your turn... so hug it. As you can see, the water fall doesn't seem fierce, it doesn't look strong. So i went up to it, trying to get my arms around it with no avail. So then i did the old 'Yawn, Stretch and put my hand around the water fall' move.

Then Juju says, put your head in it. And so i did. Here i am getting pelted on the head with water.

It actually hurt, as you can see from my dissatisfied look. That's the last time i listen to him.

We dried up and went up to our hotel room to take one last look around, making sure we didn't forget anything. It was actually quite sad to be leaving. The whole time we were in Puerto Rico, i didn't once think about the fact that it would all be over in a week. Since we got married on a Friday and had our gift opening on Saturday and then left for out honeymoon on sunday, It felt like a whirlwind, like the party never ended.

Now that we were getting ready to go back home, i started feeling sad.I knew it would soon be time to go back to reality. Back to work, back to our everyday routine.

We caught a cab and made our way to the airport. The customs lines were ridiculously long. Once we were past customs and had actually made it to the waiting area to board the plane we heard an announcement saying that our flight was over booked and wanted a few volunteers to fly out tomorrow and they would get a travel voucher and their accommodations paid for, for the extra night. My ears instantly perked up! Juj, on the other hand was so fed up with the lines and the waiting that he just wanted to get on the plane. Although i insisted that we should do it, seeing that neither one of us had to work the next day Juju wanted to simply get home. The more and more i think about it, we should have taken the airlines offer. Next time for sure, if it ever happens again, im all over it.

My sister and brother in law picked us up from the airport. It was nice to be home but its was very cold, well it was about 50 something, but compared to 85+ degree weather on a tropical island-i was freezing! I immediately wanted to run back thru those doors on the return flight to puerto rico. Needless to say i got sick- what a way welcome home.