Breakfasts one and two: Quick 1 min oatmeal with brown sugar. Green tea.

Lunch one: Bagels and cream cheese, beef jerky, home mixed trail mix (cashews, honey roasted peanuts, banana chips, m&ms, yogurt covered raisins), fresh oranges

Dinner one: 2 cups instant rice, 1 can cream of celery soup, 1 can cream of chicken soup, 1 large foil packet of precooked/diced chicken- all mixed together and heated through and a little later the boys also made instant 4 cheese potatoes, instant gravy, and another packet of chicken. 

Lunch two: Hard salami, pepperjack cheese, wheat thins, and bacon cheddar squeezy cheese from a can. Fresh oranges, velveeta shells and cheese, and more trail mix.

Dinner two: McCormick Zesty Italian Marinara sauce packet (add a can of tomato paste), whole wheat noodles, whole grain artisan bread- warmed on a rock by the fire.

Snacks throughout the trip (and breakfast three): Various flavored granola bars, trail mix, fresh apples and oranges, s’mores, kettlecorn, hot chocolate, propel flavor packets for water, and a few other things I can’t remember right now. 

The food was a bit heavy but oh so delicious and worth every pound carried.  We ate a good portion of it and didn’t come back with too many extras…  Now I’ll just need to find a few new meal ideas for the next trip!!!

I am so jealous of Nathan who gets to do a short camping weekend in a couple of weeks.  Curse you Saturday psych class!!! 

Just one more month and I’ll get away for a 3-day weekend at least.  Backpacking on the Superior Hiking Trail.  So excited to get out into the wilderness and hike my bum off!!!! 

A couple months after that we’ll be heading to the Boundary Waters for (**crosses fingers***) a 5-day weekend.  That will be using up my last few days of vacay.  Man, I want summer to be here!!!

• It appears as though YouTube demolished the clarity & quality of this video.
• Disregard Amy’s nut comment regarding those we love getting the delicious candied almonds. It is unlikely more than a couple people will get them as Amy is loving them so much she is eating most of them.
• El Yunque is a rainforest. A rainforest is classified by 100″+ inches of annual rainfall. El Yunque gets about 20X” of rainfall annually.

  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rain+forest

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Yunque_National_Forest

• Yes, Lost is just a TV show…but seriously we found The Hatch.
• The Beef empanadas where delicious too.
• There is video from the Bioluminescent bay, but you cannot see a thing. In fact what you can hear Amy and I saying actually sounds kind of disturbing without video.
• A Flip Video Ultra HD is worth every penny for traveling.

Here is a video of us as we are wrapping up our trip out to Gilligan’s Island:

Since booking our San Juan Airfare in July I’ve been watching car rental prices. On hotwire and individual company’s sites. They never really got below $180 for a 7-day rental. Which isn’t bad but I was sincerely hoping for a price of $150. A couple months ago I reserved a car at $180+taxes/fees (total- around $220). That was our back-up car in case hotwire did not come through for us.

Hotwire, once again, came through for us!!! I just booked our 7-day Puerto Rico car rental for $151!!!! AND it’s a mid-sized car, not an economy like the enterprise rental would have been.

Only downside is Nathan is the only authorized driver for the week, but he’s cool with that. We’re saving around $70 by booking it this way!!!

Anywho, check out hotwire when you need a car rental next time!!!

I am so, so excited for the winter break. We have 28 days off of school of those 28 days we only work 10 of em!!! We’ve got Christmas Eve/Day off and New Year’s day off and then we jet off for 9 days in Puerto Rico!!!

Already our Puerto Rico schedule is jam packed full of sweet activities. We’ll decide once we get down there which of them we’ll do. On our list so far:
Cabo Rojo Lighthouse
Gilligan’s Island (secluded, undeveloped island you can kayak to and do swimming/snorkeling)
Renting boogie boards one day
Coffee Plant Tour
Bio-Luminescent Bay Tour (we’re for sure doing this one, it’s already booked
El Yunque Rainforest and waterfall hiking
Bacardi Factory Tour
El Morro and San Cristobal forts tour in Old San Juan
Eat lots of delicious Puerto Rican foods!
and more…

Anywho, it’s been forever since we’ve had our very own exclusive vacation that was over 5 days long. We are so excited to get away from it all and escape to a warm atmosphere with just each other

We ate around 2pm. Had a nice leisurely day at home. Matthew came over for a few hours and the boys played Halo.

Friday Nathan dropped me at Jessica’s at 6am. Polly met us there too. We all loaded up in Polly’s truck (which she had stocked with donuts for breakfast, excellent thinking P- they were much appreciated!) and headed out. We shopped from then until around 2pm. Then headed back to Jessica’s and wrapped some gifts.

Polly and I had decided we wanted to take advantage of the TV deals going on but didn’t want to wait in line at Target. On Thanksgiving I found a good deal at Sam’s Club so reserved 2 TV’s and we picked them up on the way back to my house so Polly could drop me and our new TV off. We love our new TV!!! It’s part of our Christmas gift to each other this year. Plus we got a really good deal!

Later that night Kevin called and was wondering if we wanted to see a movie with him (it was his bday). He wanted to see 2012, so we headed over to pick him up (he can’t drive for the next 3 months) and went and saw that. It was a great movie, highly suggest it!

Saturday was homework day. Then church and date night. We saw New Moon, it was really good, way better than Twilight. After that we hit up Applebee’s for half priced appetizer’s, num! Except the place was PACKED!!! Full of a bunch of teenager’s. It was weird to realize how long ago it was that I was part of that world, lol.

Sunday was chore day! Nathan finished up the rest of our homemade Christmas gifts and I worked on my portion of homemade gifts. I ironed ALL of Nathan’s work clothes, which I did as I watched The Bodyguard, yes it took me a whole movie to iron his clothes!!! I wasn’t even moving extra slow or anything, ironing is so annoying!

I then proceeded to clean out both of our closet’s. There are so many clothes neither of us wear and it was time to purge and pass them along to people who can really use them. I dropped off an entire car load at Chap’s on my lunch today…

Anywho, so excited, only 2 more weeks of school this semester! I am so incredibly ready for our 4 week break! 1/3 of that break will be spent in Puerto Rico!!! YAY!!!!

Anywho, hope all is well and everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Had an absolutely amazing time and we will go back.

Wednesday arrived at Tesoro Los Cabos around 9pm.  Had a 5th floor marina view room, kind of a small room but we didn’t spend much time in there and the amazing view made up for it.  It was so extremely clean.  The king sized bed was pretty hard, but we had brought our own sheets from home and I think that helped make up for the hardness.

After we got settled in we walked along the marina and ended up at Alexander’s for dinner.  Had the combination for 2- lobster, filet mignon, shrimp, and fish.  Pretty good.

Thursday we ate breakfast at The Crazy Lobster.  Super close to our hotel and excellent omelet breakfast and 2 for 1 drinks.  Headed to the beach around 10am and spent a few hours at Mango Deck.  Then we proceeded to get fleeced by the beach vendors, lol.  After Mango Deck we headed to The Office and it was a total rip off.  2 drinks, 2 waters (which we hadn’t asked for), and chips/guac/salsa was $30.  Had a ton of fun though and ended up back in our room by 2pm napping.

Woke up later that evening and went out for dinner- we ended up at Burger King, I’m ashamed to admit that we were in Mexico and ate at BK, lol.  But we needed greasy, familiar food.

Friday we had breakfast at Mama Royal’s- the stuffed french toast and fresh squeezed OJ was to die for. For lunch we went to Gordo Lele’s, it was so absolutely delish!!!  Had carne asada and shrimp tacos- num!!!  We loved his singing too.

Friday afternoon went snorkeling with La Princessa Catamaran, met some other people from MN that had 4 timeshares at Playa Grande, talked about that.  Overall I didn’t like snorkeling in Cabo as much as the Caribbean.  Water was too cold and not as clear, but the boat ride was great!  After snorkeling we were really craving Gordo Lele’s again so we stopped and got a few more tacos!

Saturday we ended up doing a timeshare tour at Playa Grande because we wanted to see the property we had heard about from our new friends.  We got free breakfast and free parasailing.  It was well worth the 2 hours since we wanted to see the property anyway.

Saturday afternoon ate at Tanga Tanga and spent the rest of the afternoon at Mango Deck.  We enjoyed partaking of their french fries right out on the beach.  Saturday night had fresh lobster from Lorenzillo’s- so amazing!!!  Later we went to El Squid Roe and Cabo Wabo.  Both places were pretty busy and packed, especially Cabo Wabo.  Had a good time.

Sunday breakfast at The Sleepless Lobster, another afternoon at Mango Deck, and dinner at Gordo Lele’s.

Overall had a totally awesome time.  Loved the food and people and Gordo Lele’s.  Can’t wait to go back!