The Trimmier Life

Dustin and I had the privilege of dogsitting Dozer, Vera & Dayton’s English bulldog, while they were away on their honeymoon.  I must say, this was one of the easiest dogs to care for — he liked to lay around and just chill most of the time.  He did enjoy his afternoon play sessions (although they couldn’t last more than about 5 minutes because he would get so hot and out of breath), and he liked his dusk-time walks to the mailbox (and pooping in the neighbors yards), and he really looked forward to his right-before-bedtime tug-of-war game with his toy monkey — but other than those few things, he didn’t require much.  He was such a sweet dog and we are glad we had the pleasure of his presence for the few days that we did!

As I celebrated the 4^th of July with my friends this year, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the men and women who fight for our freedoms. My cousin, Joey, will be joining their ranks in just a few short weeks as he deploys to Iraq for his first tour of duty as a United States Marine. God bless our soldiers and their families who anxiously await their safe return. The playlist below contains 2 of my all-time favorite country songs…let them remind us of the sacrifices that are made on our behalves. The pics are from the fireworks show Dustin and I watched with his parents and our good friends, Jess & Rick. There is also a pic of my cousin Joey and his beautiful girlfriend, Rose (may God grant her the strength to make it through the next 7 months!).

We just returned from a fabulous weeklong vacation in Playa del Carmen, Mexico and are still (4 days later) trying to return to a ‘normal’ life. It’s hard not to beseech a michelada or banana daiquiri when the clock hits 3pm (the beginning of happy hour at our resort), but we are slowly getting used to the idea. Our vacation included several days of rest and relaxation as well as some SCUBA diving and a few other outdoor adventures. Here’s how it went:

• Saturday – Dustin arrives in Playa with the Hausmans (family friends who made our trip possible by giving us a condo to stay in), he checks into the hotel and hangs around bored to death awaiting my arrival He had friends there so I’m sure he stayed occupied – by the time he picked me up from the airport on Sunday afternoon, his new favorite drink was a Bushwhacker.
• Sunday – I arrive in Playa and join Dustin at the Royal Hacienda. We eat dinner at the hotel restaurant that night and hit the sack early to prepare for our action packed Monday. Here are a few pics of our hotel.

• Monday – we join the Hausman gang (all 34 of them (technically there were 44, but only 34 joined us this day)) and headed to Salvatica for ziplining, bike riding, cenote swimming and lunch. It was awesome, although I must admit climbing to the zipline platforms was quite frightening for me. Dustin was the daredevil in this sport and even did a zipline hanging upside down! That night we joined the entire group for an ambrosial Mexican dinner at La Parrilla.

The group playing in the cenote waters

• Tuesday found us lying poolside, ordering drinks from the cabana boy and catching some rays – awwww, the life!
• Wednesday – SCUBA diving was the activity of choice. Our first dive was at Mama Viña, a 90 foot wreck dive where we saw lots of coral, a large school of fish, and lots of interesting barnacles on the sunken boat. Our second dive was at Barracuda where there proved to be a lot more sea life and several turtles. After diving and eating lunch we spent the rest of our day lounging on the beach.
  

• Thursday – while Dustin slept in (he didn’t get home from going out until 8am!), I jumped on the dive boat and had an amazing time diving the Tortugas and Moc-che dive sites. I saw sea turtles, lots of small fish, some sizable sea spiders, 2 lobster, 2 red moray eels, a few yellow spotted stingrays, and at separate times I swam through a formidable school of tarpon (about 100 to 125 fish some weighing up to 200 pounds!) and a
  grandiose school of anchovies that encased my body as I went through them. Again, the beach and poolside bar were our places of interest for the remainder of the day.
  

• Friday – our last day of diving took us to Tres Rios and Cerebros where we swam up, over, around, and through huge coral formations that made a maze-like course rising up from the ocean floor. Crab, lobster, tiny blue hair-like shrimp, a green eel, a black spotted eel, and multitudinous tropical fish were the creatures of the day. This night we dined at La Bodeguita, a Cubanrestaurant, to celebrate AJ’s 60^th birthday. We got some cool party favors too – a shirt commemorating the trip and an engraved wine glass etched with thetheme of the week.

• Saturday – we flew home (unfortunately). It was hard to leave, but as we did we felt rested and as though we had been away from the worries of the world for quite some time…you can’t ask for much more from a vacation.

As you look through our photos from the trip, I want to remind you that this was my first time using a real underwater camera (not just the disposable kind) and I took lots of practice pictures trying to get my exposure, lighting, flash, and zooming correct so that I could capture the best aspects of the underwater environment Dustin and I love so much. So while you will see lots of pictures of coral (which may not be that interesting), there are some <what I consider> good pictures of sea life if you look for them.

Enjoy and until next time, adios amigos!