Our Trip- Venice and Med cruise: Day 1

Last fall, Young Living hosted a contest- the top 400 members won a Mediterranean cruise.  If you have read this blog for any amount of time then you know that travel is such a huge thing for me.  I set my sights on this trip and found out in February that we won.  We left on June 3 and decided to spend a couple of days in Venice before getting on the boat.

Flying in over the Alps.  Beautiful!

Once we landed, we got a private water taxi to our hotel.

So many beautiful bridges.

We stayed at the Hilton Molino Stucky.

We got to Venice at 9am and thankfully our room was ready.  We had traveled the entire night so it was so nice to get our things situated into the room. We decided to shower and freshen up and then head out to see the city.  We were so tired....but knew we needed to stay up.

Amazing views of Venice from our room.

I never travel without my Young Living diffuser.  I get it started as soon as we check into a room- it helps to clear out the air and remove the yucky stuff.

The famous Bridge of Sighs

St. Marks Square.  Not sure that I've ever been on a vacation with this many people!

Inside St. Marks Basilica

These mosaics were so pretty.

Venice is a huge spider web of alleys and canals.  So neat!

The food in Venice is amazing.  We had the best pizzas and the freshest pastas and sauces.

Lunch our first day at this restaurant.  Yum!

A lot of the restaurants have fresh seafood and veggies displayed at the front.

I was so intrigued by the locals- lots of clothes hanging out to dry.

I took about 300 pictures of canals just like this one.  It never gets old.

You can't go to Venice and not take a Gondola ride.  By this point, our travel was catching up to us and our heads were literally nodding on this ride.  So sleepy!  

We stopped into a coffee shop and got some Espresso.

We finally caved and headed back to the room for a much needed nap!  It was weird seeing the clocks in military time.

We slept a couple hours and then headed back out for dinner.  We ate at this neat outside patio overlooking the water.

Lots of fresh salads

Shawn was in cheese heaven.

Venice was SO hot and humid.....so sweet boy insisted that we eat lots of gelato.

Venice is known for pick pocketers.....so I carried my purse and backpack like this the entire time.

Venice at night.

Not sure if it was the hours of flying, the heat or all the walking....but my poor legs were not happy with me.  So swollen!

New Finds- Travel Style

I'm not an experienced traveler by any means.  We do travel often but since I don't travel regularly for work, I wing it on most trips. This trip we have coming up is long.....and far....and covers land and sea so I needed some items to make life easier.

I found this pill box on Groupon and really like it.  It has 4 compartments for each day so I can spread out all the supplements I take.  I filled this up and then put 4 days worth in a ziplock baggie and I will refill this once I use a few days up.

Compression bags- my first time to use them.  I do think they made packing my suitcase easier.  I'm pretty nervous to see what my clothes look like after I pull them out.  

I ordered this fun initial luggage wrap a while back on GroopDealz...it will help me locate my bag a little easier.

I have a backpack that I use often and love (got it for our honeymoon) but didn't want to take it on this trip.  I found this one.....Shawn is not impressed.....but I think its cute.  Its not too big but big enough to hold my essentials on the plane and sight seeing.

I ordered 2 pairs of these comfy shoes from Lands End because we will be doing a ton of walking.  I got black and denim.

I always have plenty of healthy snacks and gossip mags for the flight.

Since part  of our trip will be on a boat.....and considering sweet boy and I both struggle with motion sickness.....we ordered these magnet accupressure bands.  Hope they help!

The cruise ship rooms do not have irons.....and considering I crammed all my clothes inside several compression bags......we will pray that this little steamer works some magic.

I like to use a few of these around the stateroom to give us extra places to hang towels, clothes, swim suits, etc.....

We love coconut oil.  We use it often when applying our essential oils.  We have also started oil pulling and do it several times a week.  A sweet friend told me about these travel packets so now we can still take our coconut oil with us!  Yay!

What are some of your favorite things to travel with?

Selfie sticks and other stuff

A while back, we stumbled on this brand of snacks. Have you tried them yet? Oh my. Sooo good. The snicker doodle are our favorite. Doesn't have all the junk in them. 

How many oils do you pack for an 11 day vacation? Apparently I pack 41. 

Really hard to not take an entire suitcase of shoes. I need to think comfy and practical since we will be doing a lot of walking. I narrowed it down to these...

So the other day I told sweet boy that we may want to consider getting a selfie stick. Lots of amazing picture opportunities but we will be in a place where pick pocketing is a big problem. He shrugged his shoulders like "whatever."  He decided to grab one while at Best Buy the other day just to pacify me and I can't keep him from it now. It's hilarious. 

He took it when we went to get hudson from math tutoring...

....I mean, really?

Holy cow.....today was the first day in I don't know how long that it didn't rain. We have sunshine in the forecast this next week. Yay!!

Do you take epsom salt baths? You really should. Google the benefits- removes toxins, adds natural magnesium back (most of us are deficient) , relaxes muscles.... I love adding my YL lavender oil to it. Makes me sleep like a baby. 

Cooper is so funny. He has decided he wants muscles. 

Have you watched this documentary? You should. And make your kids watch it too. It's sickening. It gave me a teaching opportunity to tell the kids that there is a reason I'm so picky about our foods. It's why I never buy Cokes, Doritos, or tons of boxed foods. It's worth the watch!

End of preschool and the ER waiting room

Last Thursday was my last day at preschool.  Forever.  This year has been a bit of a balancing act between working here and working a full time job with Young Living.  My oil business has grown to the point of full time and I felt very pulled all year long. I am really sad because this is such a great place to work.  Sweet friends....awesome families.....precious kids.  But I needed to clean something off of my plate and this was it.  I'm sure going to miss everyone here.  Such a unique place!

Oh my word.....it has rained the past month straight.  Its crazy.  There has been so much flooding and chaos because of the rain.  I hate to complain because I know it will be miserably hot before too long......but enough is enough.

Starting to pack for an upcoming trip with sweet boy.  If you travel a lot with kids (or even just yourself) then this is a great book.  It shows you how to stay healthy while traveling.  It has great tips on international flights and hotel stays.  I've got all my supplements, Ningxia Red and oils ready to go.

Someone gave this to my little Cooper.  Made me laugh.  

I had my yearly OB appt yesterday at the same hospital where Jason died.  I've blogged about this before and how hard it is for me.  Thankfully they added on to the hospital and we park around the back side and enter into the Professional Building.  Its mostly dr offices and then there is a hallway that leads to the rest of the hospital.  When I was finished, I stood at the end of this hallway and thought about walking down it.  I feel that I need to go into that ER  waiting room.   I need to sit on that couch and just be for a bit.  But I couldn't take those steps yet.  I'm pretty sure I'll know when I am ready to do that.  For now, I just did the ugly cry on the way to run my errands.  Still wish so much that he was still here.

Oil Pulling...Annie.....Pantry

Have you tried oil pulling yet?  I started a challenge in my private essential oils group on Facebook....where we are trying to oil pull every day for 14 days straight.  I have missed 1 day but am happy that I'm about 8 days in.  Read here to find out the benefits.

Get yourself a good quality coconut oil......

Oh my word.....its rained here almost the entire last 3 weeks and its in our forecast for the next 9 days.  I hate to complain.  Before we know it, it will be miserably hot.  But enough already!

This is the latest on our house.  Fixing the leak.....

.....removing the tented/cracked tile.  The leak is fixed so now we wait 2-3 months to let that dry and set.  Then we are free to get the floor fixed.  We will more than likely put down some type of wood flooring.  Nothing too fancy since we don't intend to stay here more than a year.

Friday night we rented Annie.  I was telling the boys about the original Annie that I watched when I was young.  This movie was okay- the first one can't be beat.  My family was not impressed when I busted out in song.......

So yea.....still dealing with this crazy eczema.  I'm trying SOOOO many things. Diet elimination. NAET procedures.  Probiotics.  Raw Apple Cider Vinegar.  A product to help make my ph more alkaline.  Good quality Omega 3's.....  I'm so over it!!

Took the boys to get hair cuts today.  Got so tickled because Hudson's looked like Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber.  He pretty much hates me for the rest of the day when we get hair cuts.  

Not this guy though.  He loves them.

I hate our pantry.  Its not a walk-in.  At the age of 24, I was more concerned that the pantry looked like the rest of my cabinets and I opted out of the walk-in.  Seriously?  Why didn't our builder slap me over the head for that one?  I tackled the craziness today and got it somewhat organized.  I can actually see stuff now.

Mother's Day

Hope everyone had a great Mother's Day!

Coupons from my little Cooper

Teapot card

For Mother's Day.......all I wanted was a full day in my room, door closed, in my bed, spending countless/mindless hours in front of my laptop and TV.  It was glorious.

Chocolates and magazines.

Please tell me that I'm not the only one that irons a T-shirt?

On Mother's Day, we went to Shawn's parents house......and spent some time in the closet because of the tornado warnings.  Good times.

Friday night, Hudson had an event at school....so we got alone time with this guy.  Dinner, a trip to Michaels and ice cream were on the list.

A week or so ago we had this random cracking/tenting thing going on at our house. Ugh.  Such a pain.  The great news is that it is NOT our foundation.  We do have a small sewer leak that will be getting fixed this week but even the plumbers do not feel this is related.  This happened one night when we had horrible weather and strong winds.....part of me wonders if it was a small earthquake?  The DFW area has been having some lately.

A huge percentage of our house is tile.....and its all continuous.  Which means that every bit of it will need to be replaced now.  I guess the upside is that our floors will be modern and new when we go to sell next year.  But living in this construction zone for the next few months will not be fun.