Dream A Little Dream

Trent and I seriously had the most amazing honeymoon! As a wedding gift, the parents of his best friend in high school, The Phillips, gave us their time share to the destination of our choice. All we had to do was pay the all inclusive fees and the flight there and back. We decided on Puerta Vallarta. It was heaven! A dream come true! I'll never forget getting out of our cab and walking up to the resort and thinking, "No way this is where we are staying. There must be a mistake!" But it was no mistake. It was a vacation out of something you'd see on the travel channel! I thought for sure I'd see Samantha Brown at any moment! Not only was the hotel the most luxurious place I'd ever been, but we got to swim with the dolphins, zip line through the jungle, swim in their infinity pool, get room service anytime we wanted and have our lunch by the pool. AND the cherry on top was that I was there with my very dreamy, very handsome new husband! It was perfection!



The lobby of our hotel



The view from our room looking out at the hotel. If you turned the camera in the other direction there was a view of the beach.

Petting the dolphins. One of the coolest things I've ever done!

My new husband looking so dang good relaxing on the beach!



Room service




We borrowed some bikes from the hotel and took a little ride around the town.





The food was delicious!



Zip lining.So much fun!

                                 


This was us (Holy smokes, we look like a couple of babies!)at the airport getting ready to head home. We didn't want to leave! It was such an amazing trip!



As difficult as it was for us to leave our honeymoon we were ready for our life as husband and wife to really get started. To get settled in our little 400 sqft studio apartment that we lived at in his parents backyard. To enjoy meals together after long days of work and school. To experience the hard times and to learn what it's like to work through them together. To plan our future together.

While I was looking through our honeymoon pictures the other day I came across this one:

Somehow on this vacation I found a baby to play with!(tee hee) I can remember sitting in the pool and watching her play with her mom. I was sitting on this little bench in the water and she walked right to me. She stayed with me for quite a bit while her mom and I talked. I loved it! After she went back to her mom I came back to sit with Trent on the lounge chair and Trent just looked at me a smiled and said, "Of course you would find a baby on our honeymoon!" And then after a moment he said, "You're going to be such a great mom".  Even though I was looking forward to much more time of just the two of us, I felt a surge of excitement at that moment. Together, we were going to have a family! And I couldn't wait to start that adventure with this man.

I knew I wanted children sooner than Trent. He wanted to wait 4 years and I wanted to wait 2. I was shocked when he said one day that he was ready only a year and a half after being married. We were lucky enough to get pregnant with Lucas Lucien and that was the beginning of our family.

I think about our honeymoon a lot. Whenever I go to a wedding and hear the new couple talk about their honeymoon plans there's a twinge of jealousy. I loved that time in our marriage. Everything is so new and exciting and somehow, it all seemed simpler back then. Sometimes when I've had a rough day with the kids, when the laundry and dishes are piling up, when I've stepped on the same toy on the floor about fifty times I close my eyes and escape to Puerta Vallarta for just a moment. When I open my eyes again, I decide that I wouldn't trade anything that I have right now to go back to that time in our lives without our boys. The reality that we have now is better than anything I could dream up! I love my little family that we have right now. I love that I get to be a stay at home mom. Love it!!! I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. A friend of mine from church tragically lost their little 18 month old daughter earlier this week. My heart breaks for their little family! How precious and fleeting these moments with our children are! It's has been a reminder to me of the covenants the we made in the temple and the eternal family that we started there.

This is where our family really started almost 5 years ago:

I'm thankful every single day that my family is mine forever. Our Heavenly Father was so wise in his plan for us. He knew we needed families to get us through this mortal existence. It's hard to imagine what we'd be like without them. When I think about that couple in those honeymoon pictures I feel a little excited for them. They thought life couldn't get any better than it was at that moment! They had no idea how many wonderful things awaited them!