Aruba! We Have Arrived!

So today I started my last senior trip with my last kid. After all  my sappy posts over the last few weeks I am really not sad about this at all, happy to be sharing one last vacation with Lainey.  Over the last couple of weeks, I have had some tough stuff going on with some volunteer groups I work with, so I was anticipating the chance to get away for a while now.

I made a promise to my girls about 8 years ago now that when they graduated high school they could pick a place to go, just me and them, for a vacation. Micaela brought a couple friends and their moms along and we had a fabulous time touring the Greek Islands. Rylee chose Iceland and a better choice could not have been made for her. Lainey just knew she wanted someplace warm. A few of my friends posted on Facebook about Aruba.  We did some research and found it to be safe, warm, reasonably priced and declared it to be perfect.

Arrived! 

Leaving the house this  morning at 5:00 made for a long travel day.  Travel days generally stink and I am always glad when they are over...mostly because it means I am on vacation.  We rented a car at the airport and, since we don't have international service on our phones, Lainey navigated with a map.  Full of confidence we set about finding our way and when we were about a mile from the hotel, we both said, "HA take that Stephie!!" because we were truly amazed we made it with only a minor hiccup without our trusty compass/internal navigation system/map guru Steph.

So, we pulled up to the hotel....wait...this isn't the hotel....this is  sand road leading to a straw hut....uh oh.  Guess who is lost and who has their tales between their legs and now must proclaim out loud, "Sorry Stephie...you are the only one who can navigate us anywhere."    We realized our mistake and turned around and made it to the hotel, this time with, no trouble. We really did.

We are staying at the Hyatt Regency.  It is a beautiful beach front hotel with restaurants, shops and bars.  We got here late so we didn't have much time to look around.  We did make it to the beach and found a beach bar where, from the looks of it, there had been a lot of day drinking going on.  DJ playing music, good food, and a pina colada.

Tuna Salad

Happy to catch the sunset and hit the sack.  Ready for tomorrow!