The Young and the Restless

It never gets old

The next few days looked much like the first, but the monotony of laying on the beach and eating all day was by no means getting old.

15 for 15 years. It looked a lot better five attempts earlier before the tide kept washing it away.

They have an incredible reef surrounding the island, but there was a devastating typhoon a few years ago that destroyed a lot of it. Most of the remains have been washed up on the shore, such a shame. And it's not too pleasant to walk on barefoot either. It is slowly coming back to life, though.

My Karate Kid. Did I tell you that I used to have a crush on Ralph Macchio? I would lay in my cool teen aunt's bed dreaming of Karate Kid as I stared at the poster hung just below the Rainbow Brite wallpaper border. What a dream boat.

The ever changing sky this night was just jaw dropping. God is an incredible artist.

Our last day was spent much the same. No surprise.

But it ended on such a romantic note with a candle light dinner on the beach. It felt like we were on the set of The Bachelor. In case you were wondering, I said yes to the fantasy suite card and he gave me the final rose. I landed my dream guy. I really did love this night. I feel like so many times our dialogue is the same. How was work? How are the kids? Can you believe this weather? It's like that Modern Family episode where he's looking up current events on his phone under the table so that they can have something intellectual to talk about while they're at dinner (if we're being honest, there's a Modern Family episode for almost every aspect of life). But we were really on a roll this night and it felt so good. Sharing childhood stories, aspirations for our kids, religion, future goals and my secret dream job to be a National Geographic photographer. I started falling hard all over again. The boy in baggy jeans and a backwards baseball cap who stole my heart while playing Smashing Pumpkins on his guitar, has now turned into this incredible man. Look how far we've come, baby.

We couldn't avoid the inevitable any longer. The day came when we had to say goodbye. It was another early morning, but these spectacular sunrises make the pain of waking up at 5:30 on a vacation not quite so painful. Still painful, but a little more bearable.

Quite arguably New Zealand isn't too bad of a place to come back to. It's like going from one vacation destination to another (except only one of them has warm beaches and cabana boys). And it's always good to be back together as a family. We spent the entire next day camped out in pajamas on the couch watching 23 consecutive episodes of Curious George while Maddox was excited to share with me that he found three different ways to itch his tongue. If it weren't for the splotches of random sunburns, the cut from the coral on my thigh and the occasional traces of sand I'm still finding in the car, then I would think it was all just a dream. But all good things must come to an end, and home is a pretty good place to end up at.