First Look + Wedding Party + Family Photos

One decision every couple needs to make is whether or not to see each other before the wedding. This was an easy decision for us to make as we wanted the intimacy of a first look photo with just us 2 (and our photographers, of course). Plus we wanted to get to our cocktail hour as soon as possible and taking photos after the wedding would have meant we missed that part of the evening entirely. I do like the idea of seeing your groom for the first time when you are walking down the aisle, but having a first look was the right decision for us (you do you!).

On the way to meet my groom!

 

We've gone on so many runs in this area. We crossed this bridge many times when we did a 3.5 mile loop run in my old neighborhood, so it was very cool to have our 'first look' here.

Some of my favorite photos are the ones that really captured our personalities and the playful nature of our relationship!

In this photo we were trying to impersonate each other's expressions.  Ha.

Our "oh my gosh we are getting married" expressions!

After 30 minutes of first look photos, our wedding party joined us! My sisters were my matrons of honor and I had them pick out a navy dress. Phil had a high school and college friend as his best men and his ushers were 2 college friends and a high school friend. The guys all wore gray suits that they already owned. We felt really good about the fact that no one had to buy a suit for our wedding. Again, to each their own, but we liked that no one had to spend money on a tux or suit rental. 

I struggled a bit with the decision about how large our wedding party should be. I've been in 10 weddings but I knew that I couldn't ask everyone whose wedding I'd been in to be in mine. In the end, I am so glad I decided to just have my sisters. There were fewer people to corral and it cut down on the cost of flowers since we only had to make 3 bouquets and there was an intimacy to just having my sisters standing up with me. Phil also felt strongly about having a small wedding party as he likes to keep things simple.

Since it had rained so much the week of our wedding, the area where we took photos was so lush and green!

To carry out the book theme of our wedding, the guys wore library card socks! My friend Nora saw these at a bookstore and purchased them for me. They were a fun detail to incorporate (I'm totally stealing Phil's pair, though!).

I love how the pictures with my sisters turned out. It was chilly that day (I was shaking in photos by this point since I'd been outside for an hour and it was in the upper 40s) so towards the end of the wedding party photos, we wore the shawls I got them as part of their bridesmaid gift!

After 30 minutes of wedding party photos, it was time for family photos! As I've mentioned before, I have a huge family! There are 19 of us total with spouses and kids!

Here we are with Phil's family - it's just him, his brother, and his mom as his dad passed away nearly 4 years ago. When you compare the size of our families, it's easy to see why mine can intimidate and overwhelm him at times.  ;)

When we were wrapping up family photos, the wedding guests were starting to arrive so we headed into the basement to hang out until it was time for the main event to start!

My mom put my veil in and headed upstairs to be seated for the wedding. 

I thought I would feel nervous at this point but all I felt was excitement and anticipation about being joined in marriage with the love of my life!

Our Wedding: Getting Ready!

Wedding morning arrived and I was oh so happy to see no rain in the forecast! Since I had a small wedding party and first look photos started at 2 pm, hair and make-up didn't start until 10:30 which resulted in a very leisurely wedding day morning. Hair and make-up for nearly every wedding I've been in (and I've been in 10, well 11 if you include my own - ha!) has started early in the day, but I loved the fact that we didn't have to get together super early that morning.

That said, I was up bright and early with excitement so my sister Abby and I went for a run! We did a 4 mile loop and ran mostly along the Mississippi.  Abby had never ran in this area so it was fun to show her around.  We stopped for a selfie in front of the church where I'd be getting married later that day!!

And we stopped for a photo on the Stone Arch Bridge which overlooks the St. Anthony Main falls.I used to live in a condo with a view of this area.

It was a COLD morning so I was a little chilly in my t-shirt but I warmed up pretty quickly. It was so wonderful to spend time with my sister that morning, doing something we both love! After our run, we grabbed breakfast at Starbucks and then I headed back to my room to lay down for a bit before showering. I did not fall back asleep but it was still nice to 'rest my eyes'.

The hair and make-up girls came to my suite to do hair and make-up and I ordered salads for everyone from my favorite local salad place. Our order was under the minimum for delivery but they made an exception since it was my wedding day!  The salads were delivered to my room by the owner of the restaurant and they included a card with signatures from all the employees! I was blown away by their service and will continue to spend money at their restaurant!

Taryn, the girl who did my hair, has been doing my hair for 10 years so she is like a good friend. She brought a friend along to do our make-up and they did such an amazing job. Taryn and her friend nicknamed me "Bridechilla" since I was so relaxed that morning!

I love the robe I wore when getting ready. I gave robes to my sisters, too, as part of their bridesmaid gift but we forgot to take a picture in them!

In the background, you can see the flowers that Amber and Kyria picked up from my friend who did our flowers for the wedding!

The suite I stayed in was so perfect for getting ready as it was a bi-level suite. The make-up artist loved doing our make-up in front of that huge window as she said working in natural light is ideal!

Before I knew it, the photographer, Jamie, arrived. By this time, my sisters had left to get their dresses and other things together. So it was just me, my mom, and the photographers (my main photographer brought a second shooter - they were both awesome to work with!). Jamie took some detail photos before I got dressed.

My mom holding my maternal grandmother's wedding ring, which was my "something borrowed"

Then it was time to slip into my beautiful wedding gown. I absolutely loved my dress so much. I didn't talk much about dress shopping, but I went to 2 different places and ended up loving a lot of the dresses at the 2nd place but this one stood out among the others, especially because of its train, which you'll see in my ceremony photos!

Jamie snapped some photos of my mom and me...

And then it was time to go meet my groom for our first look photos!!!

Currently: June Edition

Reading:  This Common Secret for my local book club meeting in July. This is going to be a tough book for me to read as it's a memoir written by an abortion doctor and I'm fiercely pro-life. But I suppose the book discussion will give me an opportunity to explain my stance on the issue and I firmly believe in exposing yourself to views that differ from your own. I'm just trying to get through the book as quickly as I can because it's so hard to read about something I have such strong feelings against. 

Loving: bullet journaling! I've seen bullet journals all over Instagram for years, but  a lot of the examples I saw were of people who were very creative as the writing in the journal was beautiful and it included illustrations and such. But after seeing some more 'straight forward' layouts, I was inspired to give it a try.  I plan to do a post about this next month, but for those who aren't familiar with bullet journal, here are a couple of sample pages. I love the flexibility of bullet journaling and it's 'to do' list approach to planning!

My monthly layout where I list out appointments and social plans

The page where I plan workouts and track what I actually did.

My weekly layout. I use this to keep track of meal plans, things I want to accomplish that week and workout plans.

Struggling:  to get to bed early enough to get as much sleep as I need. I always struggle with this in the summer when the days are so long as it's tough to transition to bedtime when it's still light outside. But I've been getting less than 7 hours of sleep a night lately and my body needs more!

Feeling: so happy to be married and have the wedding behind us. Don't get me wrong, it was truly an amazing and magical day! I'm just happy that the slow (or not so slow!) bleed of money is behind us and we can just enjoy our time together without talking about seating plans and RSVP counts and all the other little details!

Thinking: about this quote on days when I start to feel defeated about the state of the world.

Anticipating: the upcoming weekend at the lake! My parents are hosting my dad's side of the family for a pre-4th of July celebration on Saturday afternoon/evening. Unfortunately we have to go back on Sunday as Phil and I both work on the 3rd but at least we won't miss the family get together! I'm planning to bring a corn & bean salsa, a queso dip, and some carmelita bars. I mean, you have to have bars on a 4th of July celebration as it's such an American dessert. 

Watching: my garden grow like crazy! My zucchini got so huge that I had to move the pepper plants that were planted alongside of the zucchini as they were getting crowded out!

I'll be able to pick zucchini soon! Woo hoo!

Grateful: that I'm healthy enough to train for a half marathon! I'll share my racing plans in a post soon. It feels so good to be running with my running club again and following a training plan!

Listening: to allll the podcasts, as usual. I subscribe to so many that I can never seen to catch up!

Wishing: that Phil and I had the 3rd of July off so we could stay at the lake until the 4th of July holiday. Unfortunately the first business day is the start of Phil's busy time at work so he can't be gone. It will make for a shorter trip to the lake, but we'll be back with his mom 2 weekends later and I'll be back the following week when my Chicago brother and his family are there so at least we have more lake time to look forward to!

What are you anticipating, watching, and grateful for?

Our Wedding: Wedding Eve

I'm back with the next wedding recap post! On the day before the wedding, my mom hosted a ladies lunch for my sisters and close girlfriends. It was so great to get some extra time with the special women in my life. They have seen me through so many peaks and valleys so it was important for me to carve out some time during our wedding weekend for these ladies! We had a private room in a local Mexican restaurant that I love. We started off the lunch by introducing ourselves, saying how everyone knew me and sharing our favorite taco!

After lunch, some of us walked across the street for manicures and pedicures. My pedicure was at the same time as my mom and friend Courtney. It was so fun to chat with them while get some pampering and reveling in the excitement of my wedding weekend!

After our spa services, Amber was kind enough to drive me around because I had indulged in a couple of glasses of wine at lunch and some champagne at the spa. Having Amber as my driver was a Godsend because the hours between the spa and the rehearsal dinner were crazy chaotic. I will spare you the lengthy play-by-play but suffice it to say that we had to go back to my house FOUR TIMES to get things I had forgotten, from my rehearsal dress to our marriage license (!!!). One time we got almost downtown (which was 20+ minutes away) before I realized I had forgotten the marriage license. Amber was cool as a cucumber. I felt bad that I was taking up time that she could have spent with the other bloggers but she repeatedly reminded me that the primary reason she was there was for my wedding. Her and Kyria were such a huge help as they also went to get our flowers on the wedding day and brought my sisters to the church for photos. I don't know what I would have done without them and it was really nice that they said to give them things to do because they wanted to help! That way I did not feel bad or guilty delegating things.

By the time we got back to the hotel after returning to our house four times, I didn't even have time to bring my stuff up to my hotel room (I spent the night before the wedding in our wedding-night suite) so I checked in and Amber and Kyria took care of getting my dress and suitcase in the room! After checking in, I rode with my parents in horrible stress-inducing traffic. It took us 30 minutes to go one freaking mile! But luckily, I made it to the rehearsal on time (without a minute to spare) and once I got there, I told myself to let go of the stressful hours leading up to the rehearsal and just soak in the evening.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures from the rehearsal.  I was too busy talking with people and 'being in the moment' to think to take a single picture!  Whoops.  It was a wonderful evening, though. The rehearsal at the church went super smoothly and the rehearsal dinner was wonderful. We had the rehearsal dinner at a local Eastern European Deli. It was super casual but the perfect way to kick off our wedding weekend. We had a buffet of sausages, cabbage rolls, pierogies, sauerkraut and a cucumber salad. Both Phil and I are of German descent so it made sense to have some German foods at our rehearsal dinner. This is one of our favorite 'whole in the wall' kind of restaurants. It's been open for 50+ years. It was fun to introduce our out-of-town guests to a local institutions with delicious food. We had 40+ guests there as we invited aunts and uncles that had traveled far for the event. Plus my family alone is 19 people with all my nieces and nephews so it was bound to be a big gathering!

I ducked out of the dinner around 8pm, I think, and swung by the hotel restaurant to see my blogger girls.

They gifted me a cool, personalized recipe box full of recipes. Talk about a personal and fun gift!

And then it was time to head to bed for some beauty rest. Several people asked me who was going to stay with me the night before the wedding - I chose to spend the night alone in our wedding-night suite. I know a lot of people spend the night with a sister or friend, but I appreciated having the room to myself. Plus I knew I was going to be tossing and turning so it made sense to not ruin someone else's sleep!

If you are married, did you spend the night before your wedding with someone else? If you aren't married, would you want to stay with someone or sleep by yourself?  After many many years of living alone, it just felt right to stay by myself that night! Plus it would have been weird to have another person stay in the bed I was going to be sharing with Phil on our wedding night.  Ha.

Our Wedding: Wedding Week

Now that we have all our wedding photos back, I'm ready to start to my series of wedding recap posts! I thought I'd start off with the lead up to the big day!

Fortunately, I have a very generous vacation package so I was able to take off most of the week of our wedding. Phil gets less vacation time so he worked up until the day before the wedding. I worked on Monday and was off for the rest of the week! My first day off was fairly low key.  I had some errands to run and details to finalize but I didn't have a ton to do (well, besides obsessively checking the weather). Our wedding week was extremely rainy and the forecast flipped back and forth between saying it would or wouldn't rain. While our wedding wasn't outdoors, I wanted all of our pictures to be taken outdoors since we were getting married in such a pretty area of Minneapolis.

It rained every day that week, except our wedding day. I was feeling pretty stir crazy, though, so I didn't let the rain prevent me from getting a run in on Tuesday morning. I did end up getting poured on during this run but I didn't mind and it was my fastest run this spring, and I have yet to run that kind of pace (8:40ish) since that day!

One good thing about ALL the rain is that everything looked so lush and green!

I got through my to-do's pretty quickly so had enough time to make roasted chicken and veggies!  On Tuesday I remember thinking that wedding week was going to be a cinch!  I was so naive - little did I know that Wednesday and Thursday were going to be a little stressful/jam-packed!

That 'I've got this' vibe dissipated pretty quickly on Wednesday, which was a totally over-scheduled day. The day started off great with breakfast with my friend Courtney and her 18 month old, followed by my final dress appointment where Courtney learned the complicated bustle process. After that, I headed downtown to drop off all the hotel bags and get my brows waxed.

There was one snafu that I tried to deal with that day. I had put my garden in the previous Saturday and despite the fact that I wore sunscreen, I got tan lines from the tank top I wore.  Womp womp. I thought they were fine and would fade but my alterations lady said I really should get them taken care of by getting a spray tan.  So I made an appointment for the late afternoon but when I got there, the woman decided it was best to not get a spray tan because I got a very slight sunburn along the edges of the tank top and if you have burned your skin at all, there's a risk that you will peel after the spray tan, which will look even worse.  So I decided to just deal with having tan lines. Luckily I had a veil so it wasn't very noticeable during the ceremony which was the only part of the day when people were really focusing on my back!!

After that debacle, Phil and I headed to pick up Amber at the airport and then we took her to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner. Phil and Amber hadn't met but had heard a lot about each other so it was great that they had a chance to get to know each other! After dinner we headed to pick up Kyria at the airport!

Reunited and it feels so good! And yes, I'm the only one in pajamas in this photo. Ha.

I am so glad that I got some extra time with these two ladies and they got a chance to see where we live! Phil had met Kyria before as she was our host/tour guide when we went to San Francisco last April. They are clearly 'old friends' in Phil's mind because when we walked in the door, Phil asked Kyria if she wanted a beer and when she said yes, he told her to grab him one from the fridge, too.  Ha.  Luckily, Kyria gets Phil's sense of humor and wasn't put off by his, um, lack of hospitality!

This is getting lengthy so I'll stop there! My next post will cover Thursday, the day before the wedding which included a ladies lunch and mani's/pedi's and our rehearsal dinner. It was also the day when I became a complete scatterbrain.

If you've been married, were you calm during the week of your wedding? Luckily, my 'stressed' phase was fairly contained and by my wedding day I was referred to as "Bridechilla" by the hair and make-up people.  :) 

TGIF!

Whew - summer is definitely here in the midwest, and I am loving it! I know there are varying opinions about hot weather but I personally love it!  And my garden is loving it, too!  Here's how my week shaped up!

The high of my week was being able to go for a run in Chicago. This is the first business trip where I've been able to go for a run - on past trips my hip just wasn't healthy enough for a run. It felt great to log some miles along the shores of Lake Michigan. I did get caught in a downpour but it was still a great run despite that!

The low of my week was dealing with the frustrating process of changing my name at work. I've changed my name on my social security card, drivers license, and at one bank and it was very easy. Changing it at work has been a disaster. From day to day and from morning to afternoon, emails switch from coming from my maiden name and my married name. And one day emails were coming from Lisa Stegner (my last name is SEGNER). It's been so frustrating! We were acquired by a company 2 years ago and this year we switched over to their HR center and it's been a disaster - about half of my paychecks have had errors due to expense reimbursement (not paying me in full, double paying, not paying me at all). So the debacle of the name change process is sort of the last straw for me!

A book I am reading is Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett. This is a novel that deals with mental health - specifically, depression. I've heard really good things about it so hopefully it lives up to my expectations.

For my workouts I ran and had a personal training session. I've had more rest days than usual this week as I struggle to get workouts in on days when I am traveling. I'm heading to the lake today and will go for a run with my sister tomorrow which I'm excited for!  I'll get back on track with workouts next week. Some weeks just have to be light weeks, especially a week when I will have spent 4 nights away!

The best money I spent was on a new auto insurance policy. Talk about 'adulting'. Phil added my car to his policy and we got a multi-car discount so my premium dropped and his dropped even further! Plus I was able to drop my renters policy at his house (I technically wasn't renting from him but I couldn't be added to his home owner policy until we were married). Yea for saving money! 

My plans this weekend include spending the weekend at the lake with my family. Phil is staying back so he can spend Father's Day with his mom as that day is a sad day for them (understandably so). I'm glad I'll get to celebrate Father's Day with my dear dad! Here are a couple of pictures of us from our wedding (hoping to start the wedding posts next week!)

What are you reading right now?  What was the high of your week?

Honeymoon Recap Part III: Favorite Things We Did in Maui

Hello from Chicago! I'm back with a post about favorite things we did in Maui!

One reason we were drawn to Hawaii as a honeymoon destination is that it's a beautiful, beach location but it also has hiking and other outdoorsy things to do. Since we were there for 9 days, we alternated days of relaxing/reading/snorkeling at the beach by our condo with days of exploration. This was the perfect approach for us as we came back from our honeymoon feeling relaxed and refreshed (well, except from dealing with the exhaustion of an overnight flight on the way back). We usually take shorter 3-5 day trips as Phil has limited vacation time and prefers shorter trips, but when we take shorter trips, we don't have the luxury of really relaxing since we always want to do and see as much as possible. I'm so glad this trip was longer and allowed for more down time because if there was ever a time that we needed to relax, it was after our wedding!!

This post will cover some of the adventures and day trips we did. I would also add that one of our favorite things we did in Maui was snorkeling right out in front of our condo! But this is a summary of our favorite excursions, outside of spending time on the beach! I debated breaking this up into 2 posts because it's going to be a bit really long, but in the end, I decided to just keep it as one post as it's going to be mostly pictures! So settle in for LOTS of Hawaii photos!

#1 - Waihe'e Ridge Trail - Phil and I LOVE to hike. We tend to pick vacation destinations with hiking options because it's one of our favorite things to do together. So it's no surprise that our first 'adventure' in Hawaii was a hike. This hike is located on the north shore of Hawaii, not far from the airport. It's a moderately challenging 4-5 mile (we saw conflicting info and I didn't wear my garmin that day) hike.

At the start of the hike

At the mid-way point! How gorgeous is that view of the ocean?

The beautiful, lush mountains of Hawaii

At the top of the hike, feeling like I'm on top of the world - literally and metaphorically!

If you do this hike, make sure you bring lots of water. I wore my camel back and we drank about 2 of the 2.5 liters it holds (I probably drank 2/3 of the water because Phil is like a camel and does not need to drink as much as I do!). This was probably my favorite thing we did in Hawaii. The views were so beautiful and it was awesome to be surrounded by gorgeous, lush mountains. We both said this is exactly what we picture when we think of Hawaii.

#2 - Kapalua Coastal Trail - Napili Bay is adjacent to Kapalua Bay, which has a beautiful point-to-point trail for walking/running. The trails starts at Kapalua Bay and ends at DT Fleming Beach. There is a parking lot at Kapalua Bay but it fills up early in the day so we opted to run to the trail head since it was so close to our condo. As the name of the trail implies, it runs along the ocean. The views are absolutely gorgeous!

We only did this run once which I kind of regret. In hindsight, I should have ran this trail on some of the mornings that Phil was sleeping in...  but it was also nice to relax in the mornings and read on the lanai so I can't say I regret it ALL that much. But hopefully we'll be back some day and can run it again!

# 3 - Snorkeling Excursion to Molikini - Snorkeling is one of our favorite things to do in tropical locations, so we knew we wanted to do a snorkeling excursion while we were in Maui. The snorkeling in front of our condo was amazing, so we debated whether we needed to spend the money to do a trip, but we are glad that we did because it was fun to see a different area. There are so many different tour companies to choose from and many of them come highly recommended, but we decided to go with Triology as they had the best ratings on yelp. We had a wonderful experience with them. Unfortunately I do not have any photos as we decided to leave our phones behind that day as we didn't want to risk having them get wet. Trilogy usually does 2 stops - one at Molokini, which is a crater island with great snorkeling, and another along the coast where you tend to see sea turtles. The visibility was 150-200 feet! The highlight of this trip was seeing a reef shark!  People have asked if that scared me, but it didn't not scare me at all - it was just like seeing another fish. Plus it wasn't huge and it's my understanding that they are not aggressive. On the way back they serve adult beverages, including mai thais which sure were refreshing after being in the sun so much!

#4 - Road to Hana - This is a very popular thing to do in Hawaii. Before our trip, I read my friend Kelly's post about The Road to Hana. We debated whether to do this because it's a long day and a difficult drive with all the winding roads and single-lane bridges. But we ultimately decided to do it. I'm glad we did it (Phil might feel differently because he did 100% of the driving - I did offer to drive on the way back, though!) but we wouldn't do it again on future trips to Maui and I wouldn't say it something you HAVE to do.

If you do this drive, buy the GyPSy ap for the drive. It runs off your GPS so you don't need cell service for it to work (which is good because there is little to no cell reception for much of the drive). The guide tells you about the different stops and what is worth stopping for. On the way back, he gives you the history of Hawaii, which is fascinating and heart-breaking.

One thing we never would have noticed or known about if it wasn't for the ap was the rainbow eucalyptus trees, with the ap points out as we drove past. The ap also told us to stop at a free Botanical garden to see them up close.

Not the best picture, but how cool are these colorful trunks?

Some of the stops were short, like this stop on the Keanae Peninsular. We stopped and got fresh, warm banana bread here, which I wasn't able to eat due to my gluten intolerance (doh!) but Phil thoroughly enjoyed it.

This little guy hitched a ride for us for awhile after we left the peninsular!

One of our favorite stops was Wainapanapa State Park, which has a black sand beach. We stopped here for quite awhile as there is a lot to see.

Selfies in one of the coves

The black sand beach

We also saw several waterfalls along the road, like this one!

Our final stop was Haleakala National Park for the Pipiwai Trail. This was a fairly easy hike, but the views along the trail were gorgeous as you hiked through a bamboo forest. I took so many pictures

The beautiful Banyan tree we saw before getting into the bamboo forest

Hiking through the bamboo forest was just amazing. The bamboo were swaying in the slight breeze, which resulted in a chorus of bamboo clinks. It was so peaceful and beautiful.

At the end of the hike, there is a cool 400 foot waterfal!

At the start of the trail there are some pools that you used to be able to swim in, but they have closed them for safety reasons. We thought this hike still made the stop worthwhile.  It is about 45 minutes beyond Hana, though. At this point we turned around and headed back. The road does go beyond this stop but it's not paved for part of it and rental cars prohibit driving on it.  After the rental car damage debacle in Bend, we decided not to take the risk of damaging another car and we turned back.

It was about a 10-11 hour day, so if you aren't in Maui for a week or more, I would probably skip this excursion as it's a very long day!  And Phil would tell you that the drive was pretty awful because of the countless single-lane bridges. We would also advise renting a smaller car if you are going to do this drive because the roads are quite narrow. We met so many jeeps on this road and were glad we didn't rent a jeep as there would barely be enough room for 2 jeeps to meet at certain parts of the road! Also, if you get car sick - don't do this drive!  We saw one person throwing up in a tour van, and another on the side of the road. There are 600+ turns on this road so it's not a drive for those who get motion sickness in cars!

#5 - Sliding Sands Trail at the summit area of Haleakala National Park - We opted not do sunrise at Haleakala National Park as I couldn't convince Phil to get up at 3 am to drive 2 hours to see the sunrise. You need admission tickets to do this (in the past you just showed up), and we weren't able to secure tickets in advance. I could have tried to get a ticket as they release more 48 hours before each sunrise, but we decided to visit it another time besides sunrise. Please note that this is in a completely different area than the Pipiwai trail that we did on the Road to Hana. It was cool to see a volcano and I'm glad we checked it out as I don't know when we'll be up close and personal with a (dormant) volcanic region again!

If you made it this far - CONGRATULATIONS. This was one super long post. But hopefully if someone stumbles upon it, they'll have a nice summary of the best things we did in Hawaii!

That wraps up my honeymoon posts!  Any extra questions or things you wish I would have covered? I highly, highly recommend going to Maui if you have the opportunity/budget to do so. It is a pricey destination but I would say we did not spend all that much money on this trip as we used airline miles for our flights and saved a lot of money staying in a condo versus a resort. It was the trip of a lifetime. Now I'm trying to convince Phil that we should try to buy an investment property here so we can go back for future vacations and rent it out when we aren't there. He's not *quite* on board with that yet because we are planning to move (within the same neighborhood) next year.