Well, we are officially on the Forty Trip. This is the trip we are taking out of the country so that I can celebrate my 40th birthday away from my town. I just really wanted to do something special for my birthday, and I really, really wanted to be out of town for a bit, too. This week was perfect, as spring semester is over and summer session doesn’t start until next Tuesday.

When we originally started looking for what to do, I didn’t know where I wanted to go. It had to be somewhere close enough that we could be gone, have fun, and be back in a week, and I didn’t have more than about $3K to spend on it. We take a trip every year, so we always spend about that much. We love to travel, and since I did none of that in my previous marriage, I’m taking the time and advantage of our more-wealthy situation to go places I’ve always wanted to go. So far, we’ve been to six different countries and we’ll add one more to our list this week.

Right this very moment we are sitting on our balcony outside our hotel, watching the last of the sunset and the evening settling in. It’s warm – about 80 degrees still at 7pm in San Juan. Nice, though, as I am not a cold-weather fan.

We walked along the beach today right after we got here. It was nice. It was high tide rising, so we had to do a bit of mountain climbing to get back to dry land. Saw my very first native hermit crab and another crab on the rocks. They were really cool.

Tomorrow, we get on a boat to sail the sea. It will be so nice to be on the ocean again. I so love it.

When I return home, I’ll be 40. That’s just hard to believe. It’s been 40 years! I can’t believe that we’ve been married for nearly 6 already, but we have.

Cheers.