I'm so excited! In just about two weeks, my hubby and I will be sitting on a cruise ship headed for the Caribbean. We've been planning this for a long time, almost a year now, but it still sounds almost too good to be true! Me, on a cruise ship, in the actual Caribbean, who'da thought that?

Like I said, we started planning this about a year ago when I realized that this year was going to be our 25th wedding anniversary. Yeah, who'da thought I'd actually be having a "Silver Anniversary". That's kind of trippy all by itself. It doesn't seem like we've been married for almost a quarter of a century. That's a big deal and I figured it deserved a big celebration, especially since anniversaries 1 through 24 have been b-o-r-i-n-g - even our 20th. No disrespect to Tony, but all we usually do for anniversaries is dinner or maybe a show or something and this year I decided I wanted to do something really special.

You know how I'm always talking about The Secret and how wonderful it is and I think this is a very good example of how it has worked for me. I really wanted for us to go on this cruise, but let's face it, we're not rolling in dough kind of people, and we had just bought a new house, so money has been a little tight lately. But I really wanted to go on this trip and I just really stepped out in faith that there would be a way to pay for it without putting us in debt for the next five years. So we picked out the trip and put the deposit on a credit card. And it was the funniest thing - money just started rolling in from all sides. Some of it was expected, or kind of expected money, but a lot of it just came out of the clear blue sky.

We got a refund from our movers who had damaged some furniture in our move. It had taken five months to get, but it came at just the right time to pay for our passport fees and our hotel in Miami. Then I had some money coming from some oil leases my Dad left me. I knew some money was there, but it turned out to be more than expected and it paid for the deposit and a little bit extra.

Then I had some money coming from a stock option plan from work. I knew it was coming as I've waited 5 years to get it, but it came at just the right time to pay for our excursions. The funny thing was that the stock price took a huge dip right then and I was really upset because I thought I wouldn't be able to sell them at a good price, but I was on vacation one day and I happened to log in for just a minute to get a message from my sister, and on that ONE day, the stock price had jumped up by about $2. I was able to immediately sell my shares and got about double what I was expecting. That's the way The Secret works some times. Through seeming coincidences and by having a positive attitude and faith that things will come out right, and somehow they usually do. It's a mystery!

Then we had the big bulk of the cruise payment was due right at Christmas and I was getting a little bit worried. We had all our usual Christmas expenses and it seemed like all the sources of money that I was expecting had pretty much dried up. But I thought back about all the great experiences we had had so far in bringing in unexpected money and I kept my outlook positive. I went to the cruise website and looked at pictures of the cabin we would be in. I'd even lie in my bed at night and try to imagine the feel of the ship moving and imagine the sights we would see. That helped me really get into the excitement of this great trip and that brought my hope back.

Then I got some news at work that really annoyed me. We had been hearing rumors for months that there had been some lawsuit about overtime and that they were working on changing all the exempt (salaried) people back to non-exempt (hourly) people. This really ticked me off because I'd been salaried for years and didn't really like the idea of going back to timesheets and nonsense like that, but wait.... There was a little part in the fine print that said they would be compensating us for all unpaid overtime we had worked over the last two YEARS! Well, there ya go! That was enough to pay for almost the entire cruise. Woohoo! I still have about $300 more to go, plus our spending money and shipboard charges, but I know that will all work out in the end and we will be able to relax and enjoy our vacation.

Before you ask, no we are NOT taking the kids along. It's kind of hard to be without them, but we're lining up a bunch of friends and relatives to keep an eye on them and keep them out of trouble (I hope!). We did take them with us when we went on our Mexican Cruise a couple of years ago. They had a wonderful time, but we really did it on a shoestring budget - all four of us in an "inside" cabin and if you've ever been on a cruise and seen those inside cabins, they are TINY, it was like sardine time to put four people plus all our luggage in that itty bitty cabin! Sleeping was a real adventure because our beds were literally touching - three across with Blake in a little bunk on top of us. We found out that Matt talks in his sleep, I snore, and Blake kept dropping his stuffed animals on our heads. But we really had a wonderful time and I'm sure we'll have a great time this time too, on our own. And if we run into Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom out there, that's just icing on the cake!