It the Summer REALLY Almost Over?

O hai.

I know I've been MIA the last few weeks, but between revisions for Windemere and my family vacation, I've spent precious little time on anything else. I'm happy to say that after those edits (which included rewriting the entire last third of the book that required a fourteen hour writing session at one point) the rest of them should be smooth sailing. My editor was thrilled with the new ending and I'm thrilled that she's thrilled because I really don't know if I could pull off another 14 hour write-fest. Thank God for my husband, who took the kids down the shore that weekend, which gave me a writing block of three uninterrupted days. He was a godsend during this book's revisions. An absolute godsend.

And, yes - we did a family vacation - a 9 day cruise to the Caribbean to celebrate my inlaws upcoming 50th wedding anniversary. Fifty years and they haven't killed each other (or anyone else, for that matter.) It's amazing to think of being married to one person for that long. My husband and I just celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary in June and it isn't easy, that's for sure. I'd have killed me long ago, I'm such a pain in the ass to live with. :D

But this cruise was absolutely wonderful. It was my inlaws, my husband's brother, his sister, our nephew and the Boy and the Girl (4 people in one stateroom for 9 days is a bit too much togetherness, but we survived without too much incident.) We left from Port Liberty, Bayonne (I didn't even know cruise ships went out of Bayonne until this trip) and visited Bermuda, St. Maarten, Puerto Rico, and Haiti and it was probably the best vacation I've ever had. The Boy and I played on pink sand at Horseshoe Bay on Bermuda while my husband and the Girl swam with dolphins. We all went snorkeling in St. Maarten. We walked all over Old San Juan, and the hubs and I zip-lined in Haiti. A-MAY-ZING.

A few pictures that I took:

Cast-off Party on deck as we approached the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge sailing out of Bayonne, NJ

A scenic spot along the road in Bermuda

An elephant made of towels, left by our stateroom attendant one night. :D

St. Maarten, on the way back from snorkeling. No picture I took could possibly capture just how beautiful this island is

El Morro Fort - San Juan, Puerto Rico. Well, part of it, anyway.

Labadee, Haiti

Sunrise over New York City as we returned home...

Sunrise over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge as we returned to Bayonne

But now I'm back in NJ and I returned to find Windemere's second edits in my in-box, Phyllis Diller and Neil Armstrong died, and the Republican party is still chock full o'crazy. It was nice, being cut off from all the crap that is a 24-hour news cycle (I avoid politics like the plague on this blog for the most part because you'd never get me off my soapbox otherwise. And really, who cares what I think, politically-speaking?) I left my laptop at home, my cell phone remained shut off and locked in our stateroom safe, and it was wonderful. But, as all good things must end, here I am, back in the real world. Next week, the kidlets go back to school and the summer of 2012 go down in the books as one of the best, and fastest, summers I've ever spent.