Our First Summer

The last two summers have been absolutely crazy. Chad and I spent part of last summer in Europe and the rest of the summer spending every possible moment together. In other words, we were practically inseparable. This summer, our first married summer, has been a little different. Work travels have kept us apart for a good majority of the summer. It's been tough, but it's made us appreciate the time we were able to have together.

I will admit though, on multiple occasions I've thought, "Retirement is going to be the best! I'll get him all to myself, all day long." I slap myself back to reality though and recognize that we are only at the beginning of our careers. A wise man once said, "Find joy in the journey!" That's exactly what I intend to do.

Here's a recap of our crazy first summer:

Chad left to LA.

Chad left to Orlando.

Kandace left to San Diego.

After those three weeks of travel, we had an amazing weekend in Bear Lake celebrating G & R's 50th Wedding Anniversary (Grandma & Grandpa Hyland).

The whole family was able to be there and it was so fun!

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was hiking around Minnetonka Cave.

Side note: Did I mention that I'm convinced I married into the greatest family? Every single week Chad was away this summer I got a text or phone call from more than one of the Hyland's checking in on me. I love them!

After we got home from Bear Lake, we went to Alpine to house-sit for my family while they were in Portland. We were having an enjoyable experience until one of my co-workers pointed out the smoke coming from the mountainside. Sure enough, my beautiful Alpine mountainside was on fire.

I immediately left for home and made the awful call to inform my parents. As soon as I got there, I packed up their lists of requests in case we had to evacuate. Fortunately, we didn't have to evacuate. Our neighbors a few streets to the North and one street to the East were evacuated though. Crazy!

We tried to salvage the rest of our 4th of July by going rafting and zip-lining with Chad's family. It was so much fun!

Then...Chad left to Reno.

Chad left to Reno, again.

Chad left to Helena, Butte, Albuquerque, Amarillo, and Lubbock.

Kandace left to Las Vegas.

Chad left to Reno, again.

This last weekend we were able to go camping with my family. We had a lot of fun shooting guns, playing cards, and just enjoying time together. We also went to the rodeo in Heber, which I always love.

Next up: Chad AND Kandace leave for NYC. Hallelujah for a trip together!

Honeymoon

We've been home from our honeymoon for a week now and despite both of us making trips to the doctor's office this week, it has been pretty good. It was hard to come home from paradise, but reality is good too.

So here's to reliving our week in Cancun and remembering how fun it is to spend every day together...

We knew we were in for a treat when we were welcomed with glasses of champagne into our beautiful resort lobby (We obviously had to turn down the nice champagne welcome).

This was the stunning view from the lobby.

Once we checked in we were whisked away on a golf cart.  Much to my glee, we arrived at our room--an ocean view, swim-up suite.

The view from our room was incredible and so was the resort, so we obviously spent our first few days just hanging out.

We read, swam, and enjoyed our complimentary dinner on the beach and breakfast in bed.

We relived Switzerland with a life-size chessboard.

Cancun 2012

Switzerland 2011

We even witnessed a few weddings.

After a few days on the resort we decided to start our adventures off the resort. We went on the Tulum and Xel-Ha tour. It was great to be back on a bus together, again...

Tulum was spectacular. The Mayan's thoroughly amaze me.

And, Xel-Ha was also great. It was my first experience snorkeling and once I figured out how to keep my lenses from fogging, I was good to go. Trick - spit in them, rub it around, dip them in the water, wet your face = success.

The following day we went on the Snorkel Xtreme tour. We started out this tour by ziplining through the jungle, then rappelling off a tower. I only screamed once. After that it was amazing!

The third part of the Snorkel Extreme tour was snorkeling in a Cenote (an underground river where the get their freshwater). It was the coldest water I've ever been in because it doesn't get any sun, but it was well worth it. There were points where the stalactites were inches from our head. So cool!

To finish off the Snorkel Xtreme tour they took us out to a reef to snorkel. We saw sea turtles, stingrays, schools of fish, and lots of other beautiful sea creatures. It was surreal. Now I've got to go get scuba certified!

For our last off-the-resort adventure, we swam with the dolphins and fulfilled my life-long dream. Anyone remember me saying I wanted to be a dolphin trainer in Elementary school? It was soooo cool! The highlights were laying Superman and having two dolphins push me up out of the water, then riding belly-to-belly with a dolphin swimming upside down. It almost felt like I was a trainer, so I can say I essentially fulfilled that dream. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of pictures from that day because they wanted us to pay $80 for 3 pictures on a disk. It only went up from there. Ridiculous. So, we walked away with only this picture.

Seriously, Cancun was amazing! It made me reflect on how great it was to travel across Europe with Chad and spend nearly every day of 5 weeks with him. We've now traveled to 11 countries together and we can't wait to travel to many, many more. Which country should we visit next?