Cruise: Day 2 - At Sea

Day 2 of our cruise was spent at sea. We spent some time laying around on the deck, gambled a little, played Bingo, and mostly relaxed.

This was our view for much of the day!

 

The slots were my favorite! I turned $5 into $20!

BINGO!

Night 2 for dinner was formal night. Our waiters also brought us cake and sang to us since we were celebrating our anniversary on the cruise. "Happy anniversary to you...kissy, kissy..."

Our anniversary cake

Towel animal #2 - a dog wearing Josh's sunglasses

Cruise: Day 1 - Embarkation

For our 1st anniversary, Josh and I went on a cruise. It left out of Galveston with ports of call in Progreso and Cozumel. We had a great time and I'm sure we'll be going on more cruises in the future!

We boarded the ship around 11:30 and we were on vacation! This was just the beginning of a wonderful week!

Towel animal #1 - Mommy and baby seal

Pre-cruise: Galveston

I'm finally catching up with pictures from our vacation. The cruise we took in June for our anniversary departed from Galveston, so we went down a day early and played in Galveston for the day. We went over to Pelican Island to Seawolf Park and saw the submarine and destroyer escort that are there. We had fun exploring them!

Ready, aim...

Missiles!

 

After playing on the ship and sub, we went over to the beach, walked around for a little bit, and had some dinner. It was nice to see that Galveston has pretty much completely recovered from Hurricane Ike. We got to see the new pier that just opened too. It was weird not seeing the Flagship Hotel, but the new Pleasure Pier is pretty cool.

 

The new Pleasure Pier where the Flagship Hotel used to be.

Murdoch's Bathhouse - you can see the where the old pilings were and the new ones right next to them.

Book #6 - Bound To You

On Monday, I finished book #6 of the year, Bound To You by Vanessa Holland. This was yet another free book I found and downloaded to my Kindle. I'm getting good at finding free books! :) I really liked this book too. It was another one that was hard to put down. It was so hard for me to put down that I found myself reading when I should have been studying! Oops... Anyway, here is the synopsis of the book from Amazon:

A night of passion has forever bound Jenna Morgan to a man she thought she would spend her future with. Instead, he dumped her with barely a word of explanation and left the state. Three years later, she’s a single mom struggling to provide for her son and young sister, and harassed by an obsessed stalker. 

After leaving home three years ago to run his aging grandfather’s ranch in Texas, Sam Strickland returns to Tennessee to discover a child he didn’t know existed. He thought he was saving Jenna’s future when he left home, and left her behind. He never dreamed he’d return to see a child with eyes the same shade as his own - and Jenna in serious trouble.

Sam thinks his only dilemma is whether he can earn back the trust of the woman he loves and commit to the responsibility of fatherhood. But Jenna’s life is more complicated than he could have imagined and he finds himself involved in a dangerous situation that could threaten his new son’s life.

I really liked this book because it tells the story from both Jenna's and Sam's points of view. The author switches back and forth with whose side of the story she's telling. You, the reader, get the privilege of knowing what both characters are thinking.  The author does a great job with developing the characters and storyline without being predictable, which is part of the reason it was so hard to put down.

We're now just over half way through the year with half of my goal complete. I am confident that I will be able to finish another book by the end of July and be on track for the rest of the year. Once again, I'm not sure which book I'll read next, but whatever it is I won't be starting it until at least Saturday after I take the next part of the CPA exam...I must study until then! And now, the break is over...back to the studying...

Happy 4th of July!!

Happy 236th birthday to the United States of America!! I'm proud to live in the land of the free and home of the brave! Thank you to all of those who have fought and are continuing to fight for our freedom! We know that freedom is not free and thank you and your family for your sacrifice.

Goals Update - June

Half of 2012 is gone...how did that happen?! June went by incredibly fast. Of course, part of that is because we spent a week of it on vacation celebrating our 1st anniversary! We had a great time on our cruise and I think it is safe to say we will be going on more cruises in the future as Josh really enjoyed himself. (This was my 5th cruise, so obviously I like to cruise!) I can't believe the summer is flying by so quickly and July is already upon us. Then again, when does the summer not fly by?

Here's the June update:

1.   Blog – I've done good with the blog for June. I have a few things I need to catch up on, but that's what happens when you go on vacation for a week.

2.   Marathon Training – Like in May, studying took the place of running, working out, and pretty much everything else except for work and sleeping (and a little vacation) in June. I've put a plan together for July that will allow me to keep up with my studying, but also get some running and working out in. Hopefully it works out like I planned and I can get things balanced a little more.

3.   CPA – I passed Audit!!! 1 down, 3 to go! I'll be taking my next part, BEC - Business Environment and Concepts, in a week on July 7th. I've got a lot of reviewing of what I studied before vacation between now and then, but I should be ready. After taking BEC, I'll jump right into studying for the next part, Regulation (REG), and will probably be taking that one towards the end of August.

4.   Books – I finished book #5 and started on book #6. I'm 41% of the way through book #6 and will hopefully finish soon, so that by the end of July I will be caught up and on track to finishing my 12 books this year.

5.   Clean out the clutter – We did a little bit of cleaning this month. We've got a stack of stuff that needs to go to Goodwill, but that's about it. We'll be cleaning out a lot more in the next few weeks as we pack up our apartment and move. We still don't know where we're moving to, but should know more in the next 2 weeks or so. Hopefully by July 20th we'll know or otherwise we'll be homeless! 

July will be bringing about some changes for us. Hopefully Josh will find a job soon and we'll have a new place to live. The uncertainty about our future has been incredibly hard (especially for a planner like me) and we are just so ready to know where we'll be so we can begin to move on and plan for and experience the next stages of our life.

Rangers vs Astros

On June 16th, Josh and I kicked off our anniversary celebration with a trip to the Rangers game! We love going to Rangers games and with it being so difficult to get decent seats for a decent price to a game this year (thanks to all the bandwagon fans), we decided a few months ago that we wanted to go to a game to kick start our vacation, so we bought tickets. It was incredibly hot at the game, of course, but we still enjoyed our evening at the ballpark and the Rangers came out victorious!

To make it even better, we got these sweet Nolan Ryan retro t-shirts as the giveaway thanks to Sweet Baby Ray's. Gotta love the classic Nolan Ryan shirt! Never goes out of style!







Here's a few pictures from our evening at the Ballpark:

The view from our seats in left field.

I can't stand "the wave" at ballgames, so I was happy when this popped up! Thanks Russell!

Rangers win!!