​I’m BAAACCKKKKKK

Oh my goodness! Last week was an absolute whirlwind! We had SO MUCH FUN! I seriously can’t believe it’s done and over already!!
 
So for those of you just dropping in, Scott and I went on our honeymoon last week to St. Lucia. We got married in October, but decided to wait for our honeymoon. It was nice being able to enjoy our wedding, then have the anticipation of our honeymoon to look forward to!
 
I’ll give you a little snapshot of our week (and of course, you can check out a couple of my pictures here, but the rest are on Facebook), then tell you something I learned from it. Yep, I’m constantly learning new things…even on our honeymoon, LOL.
 
So our trip started at o’dark thirty Saturday, March 25th. It was a whirlwind of a day, flying from Norfolk to Miami, then on to St. Lucia. It was a pretty uneventful trip. We got to the resort around 2 that afternoon and boy, was it absolutely beautiful! And hot!! We definitely weren’t used to being in warm weather every day! It was nice not having to bundle up every day just to stay warm!
 
For the most part, our week consisted of eating, drinking, swimming, walking along the beach, hanging out at the pool with new friends we made, and then doing it all over again. We didn’t really make plans for anything, because we were really looking forward to just relaxing and resting. And we didn’t work out. At all. Not one time. Well…we did try stand-up paddle boarding and kayaking, but that lasted all of 30 minutes. In one day, LOL.
 
However, on Sunday, we met with one of the resort excursion ladies, who told us all about the different excursions the resort offered. We ended up going on a Land & Sea tour, which drove us through part of the island down to a town called Soufriere. From there, we took a speed boat to Sugar Beach, which was a nice resort area with white sand. We walked along the beach and oohed and aahed at the beautiful resort, as well as did a little snorkeling. Oh, I almost forgot…they showed us this interesting cave in the side of the island filled with bats!!! Yes, BATS! Those suckers are LOUD!!
 
Okay, so after returning back to Soufriere on the speed boat, we ate lunch at a local restaurant and got to experience typical St. Lucian food. It was delicious! We then went to this beautiful little waterfall tucked back into a corner of the island. Talk about a popular tourist spot!! It was ICE COLD, but so beautiful! Of course, we got pictures there, because DUH!!!
 
The last part of the tour was at the volcano…yes, St. Lucia has a dormant volcano! It is still steaming and crazy hot, but hasn’t been active in over 200 years! Well…here was my first experience with a volcano! We got into this little hot tub-type area filled with GRAY water running off the volcano. IT. WAS. HOT. Holy cow! It took me more than a few minutes to get adjusted to the temperature and actually get into the water!
 
After getting out of the water, we then painted ourselves with the gray volcanic sulfur stuff…literally, painted ourselves ALL OVER, faces and everything! It’s supposed to be super therapeutic and good for your skin, but it smelled like hard boiled eggs. It took a bit to get used to it, but it felt really amazing after the super hot water!
 
One of the guys that worked there then proceeded to take black volcanic sulfur stuff and further paint us! It was all over us, face, legs, arms, stomach! Seriously…just check out the picture above! We are like Amazonians or something! Hahaha.
 
But man oh man…that is one experience I will NEVER forget! You can’t go to St. Lucia and NOT do that!
 
The other excursion we took off the resort was to the zip lining park. It had 12 zip lines and was home to the longest and fastest zip lines! Can you say FUNNNNNNN?? Holy cow! We were laughing and bonding with all the other couples and families there! The only bad part is that it flew by entirely too fast! We got lots of good pictures and some awesome videos too! Our tour guide for that was pretty darn amazing!
 
Actually, all of the people we met in St. Lucia were amazing! We met some pretty outstanding people, not just other visitors to the resort, but the people who worked there, as well. Our favorite bartender was Dillan…he got us both drunk a time or two (which neither of us expected, hahahaha…oops). And of course, our favorite restaurant was the buffet-style one! We ate there pretty much every meal. The beautiful part is that they offered something different at every meal! Oy…I ate SO MUCH this week!!!
 
Oh my gosh. I almost forgot the CHOCOLATE BAR! It was the very last thing we did Friday night! They had chocolate covered strawberries, a fondue station, chocolate martinis, and other various forms of chocolate (the little square chocolate peanut butter ones were my fave!). Holy goodness! It was by far the BEST chocolate I’ve ever had! It was to die for! Luckily, there were too many people there so I couldn’t keep going back for more! Ha! Chocolate is my weakness!  
 
One of the biggest lessons I learned last week, however, was that it is OKAY to take a step back from working out and the hustle bustle of life and just RELAX and enjoy life every now and again! It is very rare when I go a whole week without working out…with the exception of being sick, I rarely go more than 2 days without working out! But Scott helped me to just enjoy the week, to realize it’s okay to splurge and that *gasp* I won’t fall apart!
 
The other lesson I learned is that I am INCREDIBLY hard on myself and my body! For the most part, I am super confident and have no issue walking around in a bikini (or sports bra and shorts…whatever the situation is). But man…not working out this week made me realize how HARD I am on myself! And then we’d take pictures and I realized, I don’t see myself the same way others do! How the camera depicts me (you know…cameras don’t lie!) and how I see myself are two totally different things!
 
So yes – even I need help being gentler on myself and not holding myself to such impossibly high standards!
 
Regardless, we had an AMAZING time and are already planning another trip! Maybe not to St. Lucia, but definitely somewhere tropical! We want to try to make this a once a year thing, because we both need and DESERVE it!
 
But for now, we are back to our regularly scheduled lives :-) Blissfully happy and relaxed and ready to take on the world!
 
I hope you all have an awesome week! It’s bittersweet being home, but I’m ready to jump back into my daily life and kick some serious butt this month!

With love and wellness,
Whitney