I know everyone says the honeymoon is the best part of getting married {get your mind out of the gutter!} but for us, it really was! After months of planning a wedding, Cory graduating and starting a new job and buying a house, we needed to recuperate. We spent seven incredible days at the Sandals Grande St. Lucian! A St. Lucia honeymoon was the perfect way to start our lives together.
We loved everything about the resort and the employees were the friendliest people I’ve ever met. They were willing to do whatever they could to make our honeymoon perfect. In my opinion, you really can’t go wrong with all-inclusive. It was so nice not having to worry about how much money we were spending or who we needed to tip. I just can’t say enough positive things about our time at Sandals.
The first couple days looked very similar. We purposefully didn’t plan too much on our honeymoon but especially didn’t plan anything on Monday and Tuesday. Our days looked something like this…breakfast, beach, pool, lunch, pool, beach, dinner and hanging out in the lobby. Every night they had live entertainment in the lobby and bars {and it was all open, facing the ocean} so it became one of our favorite spots each evening.
After a couple busy weeks months, Cory and I spontaneously decided to take a beach trip over the Memorial Day weekend. This would be our last chance to get away before the end of July. July, people! Our summer has just started and it’s already booked up. Crazy talk, I tell ya!
Our intent for this trip was to step away from life {and everything it entails} for a few days, refresh ourselves, our minds and our relationship. And that’s just what we did…our lives are so busy that we like our vacations to be full of rest and relaxation.
Friday
After work, we loaded the car up and headed down to Surfside beach.
Right outside of Columbia, we got caught in a nasty thunderstorm. I don’t handle bad weather on the road very well…it just panics me even if I’m not driving. When we stopped for dinner, we realized what we thought was rain was golf ball size hail.
It was late when we got to our room Friday night so we headed straight to bed.
Saturday
Saturday morning I woke up with a nasty cold so we headed to get some cold medicine and a few supplies from Walmart. While out, we had a yummy breakfast at Garden City Pancake House.
My favorite breakfast date.
No trip to the beach is complete without Krispy Kreme…even after a huge breakfast! With Krispy Kreme in hand, it was back to the resort to hit the beach.
And this is where Cory proceeded to burn. He always burns when he falls asleep, even with sunscreen on!
We spent as much time as we could on the beach each day and around 5:00 or 6:00, we’d jump in the hot tub for a little while. Saturday night, we got ready and headed to dinner at Dead Dog Saloon in Murrells Inlet. The atmosphere was perfect…the restaurant was on the water and there was a live band. It totally made the hour wait worth it.
The best way to occupy our time was to take selfies, obviously.
We laughed at the fact that it was 10:30pm on a Saturday night at the beach and we were in bed. And we were okay with that!
Sunday
The hardest decision I made on Sunday was which doughnut to eat for breakfast.
And then we hit the beach. Cory got smart since he got burnt on Saturday {which was partly my fault because apparently sun screen expires and the 110spf he was using was from two summers ago}. My little old man with his umbrella and shirt on!
For lunch, we walked up to River City for some burgers.
Fried mac-n-cheese on a cheeseburger??? Yes, please!
Cory’s chair at lunch… Ha!
We headed back to the beach after lunch just in time for the water to be cleared for sharks. Even though I love being at the beach, I don’t actually go in more than shin deep and this would be why. There were four or five sharks swimming about 30 feet from shore!
Since we had a late lunch, we decided to skip on going out for dinner and order pizza later that evening. It worked out perfectly because I wanted to get pictures on Saturday night but it was already dark. We headed up to the room to change and went back down to the beach for a mini photoshoot and to watch the sunset.
After the sunset, we decided to head back to the hot tub. We ended up staying in there and chatting with some new friends until almost 11pm. I was starving so we decided to head up to the room and order a pizza. When on vacation!
Monday
Originally, we had planned on coming home on Monday but we were having such a great time, we decided to stay an extra day! We booked a room with a view for Monday night so we packed our stuff up that morning and headed to the beach to wait on our new room to be ready.
Thanks to this stuff and God {because I have naturally curly hair} I had the perfect beach waves while moving rooms!
Our room with a view! We dropped our stuff off and headed back down to the beach with our leftover pizza!
Leftover pizza on the beach…does life get any better?
As I was sitting on the beach Monday afternoon, I told Cory that for the first time in months, I felt content. I wasn’t worried about what blog post I needed to work on or the laundry that needed to be folded. So often I worry about making sure I answer emails or read my favorite blogs that I forget to live my life. We had just had three whole days with no plans and didn’t go 90 mph all day. It. was. glorious.
My hope is to keep this feeling and I think I’ve done a fairly good job considering the week we’ve had since returning from our vacation. {That would also be why this post has taken so long to get up.}
Around 6:00, we headed back up to the room to enjoy our view and get ready for dinner.
Life is good!
Notice anything missing???
Let me help you out…my engagement ring and wedding band. If you follow me on Insta, you already know that our vacation took a turn for the worse on Monday night when I discovered my engagement ring and wedding band were missing from my jewelry bag down in my suitcase.
We tore our room apart, searched every bag and container we brought and even searched our first room and found nothing. We spoke with the front desk that evening and were told we had to wait on a manager to get there in the morning to check the locks to see if either of our rooms had been entered.
So I tried to make the most of our last evening and hoped for the best. Cory loves seafood buffets {I don’t like any buffets} but he had been so great to do whatever I wanted all weekend so I agreed to a seafood buffet for dinner.
One day he’ll learn to not make stupid faces because they will go on blog!
So about my rings…before we moved rooms Monday a housekeepers key was used three times to enter our room {which wasn’t cleaned when we came to move our stuff} but the resort claims that was “normal” because they would be checking to see if we had move our stuff out yet. They also claimed they didn’t have cameras in the halls to see how long someone was in the room. If they were in and out quickly, then maybe they were just checking but if not, then they were going through my suitcase and stealing my rings. The resort insisted that I had simply “lost” them and they would probably show up in my suitcase when I got home.
They haven’t.
Tuesday
We woke up early on Tuesday morning to watch the sunrise before checking out.
God was showing off Tuesday morning. His beauty constantly amazes me.
To finish our trip off, we stopped in Conway for lunch with Grandma, Aunt Kathy and cousin Amber!
Despite coming home a free woman {as Cory put it}, we had a wonderful few days away. We had perfect weather and the beach was absolutely beautiful. It was exactly what we both so desperately needed. It’s been the first vacation in a long time that I honestly felt refreshed and rested!
Today is the happiest of Fridays y’all because in less than 12 hours, hubs and I will on our way to the coast of Carolina to enjoy a few days of sun and sand! Understatement of the year would be to say that we are ready for a vacation. We are in need of a vacation. It was spontaneously planned two days ago and those of you that really know me, know that I don’t do spontaneous. I plan and search and budget and worry if we are making the right decision. Can we really afford it? Is it a waste of money? What could we be doing with our time otherwise?
But all that went out the window on Tuesday when Cory sent me a text message and mentioned that he would really like to take a vacation especially after the past couple weeks we’ve had. Cory is not a huge fan of the beach so as soon as he mentioned going, {because he knows how much I enjoy it…seriously, y’all.} I didn’t waste any time and was booking a hotel before I even had a chance to second guess myself.
Since I will be spending the next three days listening to the ocean, I thought I’d share my beach bag essentials!
click on image for details
Going to the beach makes me feel like a kid in a candy store and just typing this post has me ready to go. Like, yesterday. I can’t think of anything I enjoy more than settling down in my beach chair, right on the edge of the water, and opening a good book. It is my purest form of rest and relaxation. And three full days with Cory? Yes, please!
Needless to say, I will be checking out of blogland for a few days but if you want to keep up with all our mini vacation happenings, make sure you follow me on Instagram! Y’all have a happy and safe Memorial day weekend!
