We have just received and paid John's LAST School bill....EVER!!!!!!!!! Praise the Lord and Hallelujah....Auburn will no longer be a drain on our income (at least where education is concerned). Now I feel like there is an end in sight. John graduates in December-only 5 more months. John has warned me that 4 of these months might be kind of rough as he is probably going to be very busy. But I am going to try to remind myself to come back and read this post to encourage me that there really is a day that John will not have to come home to schoolwork in the very near future. The most exciting part about John being finished with school is the reward. Yes, the degree will be nice, but I am talking about the award for the patient wife. When John started school we decided that we would go on a big trip to celebrate once he was finished with school and we could focus on starting a family. Well the family part got started a bit early. But I wasn't going to give up on the big celebratory trip. I wanted to surprise John and plan it all myself. We first talked about NYC or Disney World. We would have enjoyed each of these, but decided we wanted it to be more like another honeymoon. Then I looked into Hawaii/Caribbean. I wasn't sold on any of these so I did a little research. I found, what I thought, to be the perfect trip. A trip of a lifetime. A place John has always wanted to go. I just ran into one little problem. John told me I couldn't spend that much money booking something unless he knew where we were going. I promised him he wouldn't be disappointed, but he wouldn't give in. He then told me we probably didn't need to spend so much money on a trip...yada yada yada. We decided against my option. Then he asked if he could know where I had planned to take him since we weren't going anyways. I pulled up my email and showed him this:
A cruise through Greece, Italy, and Turkey. Suddenly his demeanor changed!! John has talked about going to Greece since I have known him. So we decided on a cruise through the Mediterranean for our celebratory trip (Our 5 year anniversary will be in Oct 2010 so we thought this was another good reason for a big trip). We fly out June 4, 2010 to Rome where the cruise departs. We cannot wait!! The only downside is that we will be away from the little man for 11 days...that is a LONG time.
I'll get to Murphy in a second. We returned from the beach on Sunday and had a short but wonderful trip! It is totally different going to the beach with the grandparents...John and I got to take a nap one morning and even got to go out for a date Saturday night. It definitely feels more like a vacation when you have help. 
We took some pictures on the beach Friday night. Will had his first encounter with sand. Last time we forgot to let him stick his feet in the sand. He didn't know what to think of it. He kept swiping his hands through the sand and then eventually, of course, his hands went in his mouth and he wasn't so happy after that :)
On Sunday we decided to leave around 8:30 since this is when he normally goes down for his morning nap. We figured this would work perfectly and he would sleep in the car until 11am and we would then stop for lunch to feed him. Will had his own plan. He was out cold before we even had the car loaded. All signs pointed to a quiet ride home. We had to stop and get gas once we left the resort and from there it was over. He woke up while we were stopped and DID NOT GO BACK TO SLEEP. He whined on and off until 11 when we got to Andalusia. We weren't hungry yet and weren't really around a great place to stop and feed him so we ended up feeding him in a Comfort Inn Lobby. The receptionist was so kind to let us just set up camp in their dining area and we got Will fed. He finally went to sleep and slept about 45 minutes from outside Andalusia to Greenville. This time we went through a drive through to get food for ourselves and this woke little man up. He preceeded to whine and have 2 major melt downs so we stopped in Clanton at Peach Park to let him get out of his car seat and stretch his legs. Of course the fact that we wanted some homeade peach ice cream played no role in our reason for stopping when and where we did! From Clanton to Birmingham he did not cry but was on edge. I rode in the back with him and tried to entertain his as best I could. John and I sang every song we knew the words of to try and keep his mind off the fact that he had been in his car seat for about 5 hours. Here is where Murphy comes in...He only slept 45 minutes the entire 5.5 hour car ride, however as soon as we got off on 280 (less than 5 miles away from our neighborhood), guess who was out COLD? Murphy's Law!! We unpacked the entire car and all of our bags and Will was still sound asleep in his carseat. I finally woke him up at 3 to eat and then he went right back into his crib. Why do babies fight sleep so much?? Thank you Kiki and Pops for a fun weekend at the beach!
Is it really worth it to do it all over again? YES. We are headed to the Destin today after John gets off work. We are ready to relax (sort of-that word has taken on a whole new meaning now that we have Will...especially in regards to the beach) and soak in these last few days of summer vacation. I start back to work on August 6 so it won't be long.
Saturday was a special day for our family. Will was baptized. We are so thankful to our family and friends who came to celebrate with us. The service was at the church at 10:30 and then we headed to my Aunt and Uncle's house for a luncheon. Out of the 347 pictures that my friend took (THANK YOU ALEXIS!!!), here are a FEW...
My mom told me that we would have so much fun putting together a slideshow for the rehearsal dinner if they ended up getting married!
