From This Side of Thirty: Vacation Highlights-Top Ten Style

9. The crew we were with likes a little recreational alcohol consumption, as do Ole Jus and I. I learned that if you drink more than 2 glasses of sangria and wake up with a stomach bug NO ONE will believe you have a stomach bug. Here is my side…Yes I did enjoy a morning, afternoon and evening of “spicy” drinks as I like to tell the kids. Yes I did wake up the next morning feeling a touch under the weather. Yes I did spend a lot of the day in bed recovering from the stomach bug. YES I DID HAVE A STOMACH BUG. I know it sounds fishy, but my solid evidence is that 2 others in the house had the bug in the days that followed. FACT: Hangovers are not contagious.

8. Dear Rental Home Company, if a specified rental property does NOT provide linens I think the website should more clearly advertise the matter. Possibly you could put that in text on the photographs since that is perhaps the only thing I looked at in preparation for the trip.

7. Ole Jus, Caitlyn(16) and myself shared a room with 2 queen beds. I now know I have saved him from nocturnal asphyxiation every night of our marriage. I left the 2 of them in bed one morning and Caitlyn awoke within minutes of my leaving the room. Turns out, when I am not there to have the man roll over every 40 seconds the snoring is Out. Of. Control. Bless my heart. Or Caitlyn’s. Or His.

6. Dirty makes me uncomfortable. I felt the need to shower before the beach, after the beach and before bed. I also desired for my kids to have the same obsessive tendencies to which they left me utterly disappointed. There was a time during the trip where I was certain Ramzee would soon develop and impressive set of dreadlocks.

5. If you are a 12 year old boy, brushing your teeth and wearing deodorant is on the bottom of your list of priorities. How ironic that it is on the top of my list. Here is how it went every day of our trip.

Me-“Go upstairs. Brush your teeth. Put on deodorant. Focus. 2 things.”

Them-They go up. They come back down.

Me-“Let me see your teeth and smell your armpits.”

Them-They sigh and go back upstairs.

Me-I have a little rant about why they couldn’t remember to do it all in the first place.

4. If anyone left their phone unattended anytime during our vacay they were destined to have a couple hundred selfies added to their photo stream. Good times.

3. We all had a wonderful time the whole week. Chris managed to survive the week spent day in and day out with me. In fact, he and I are in love now. Not a romantical kind of love, but the kind of love where you accept that your lives will be spent together until death do us part by default of mine and Cassie’s friendship. I’d be lying if I said Justin’s cooking didn’t play a part in that.

2. Justin left a day early to get the kids home. I stayed to clean up Sunday morning with the rest of the crew. Saturday evening we decided to retire all the beach fun, so we sat around and watched movies. One of them was Red 2 with Bruce Willis. I repeatedly indicated how handsome and rugged and sexy Bruce Willis was to me. I just love him. Especially in that movie. It didn’t take long for Chris(my new love) to alert me that it is because HE LOOKS LIKE OLE JUS. Everyone chimed in, even Bridger who is 6, “He does look like Justin!” My how things have changed since bald men with muscles and wrinkles around their eyes make me swoon.