recap - Ashley Zin

So I must say, going into 2016 I thought it was going to be the best year yet, seeing as I was going into the year on a high, just having gotten engaged. On the other side of the year however, this has definitely been one of the most challenging years of my life. I wouldn’t say it wasn’t a good year, but it was definitely filled with some of the highest highs and a lot of the lowest lows. Getting married has literally changed everything.

J A N U A R Y

The first have of the year was filled with all things wedding planning. It literally consumed all of my free time. In January I found and ordered my wedding dress! We also celebrated both mine and Tommy’s birthday. Tommy took me out to a really nice Italian restaurant and bought me the sweetest gifts. I also began working basically by myself this month at my old job, Hudson City Savings Bank, because most of my floor was laid off.

F E B R U A R Y

February we had our engagement party, hosted by both of our moms. This was a really fun time, having both of our families together, celebrating us.

M A R C H

In March we took our engagement pictures, which came out so nice. I also was laid off in March and started another job exactly a week after I was laid off. Tommy also started working at the quarry this month. This month was filled with answered prayers!

A P R I L

In April, God answered another huge prayer of ours, and blessed us with the awesome condo we now live in. I was really struggling with my home situation and was super stressed out because of it and God answering this prayer really showed me that He does care about the little details of our lives. I also had my bridal shower this month, and we went on both our bachelorette/bachelor parties!

M A Y

May was a HUGE month for us because we got MARRIED this month! It was such a dream come true to marry my best friend. We left from the wedding and took a limo into NYC where we stayed for the night and flew out the next morning and spend a week in the Dominican Republic. Soo wishing we could go back to that now!

J U N E

I honestly don’t think we did much of anything in June. We needed some much needed rest from the craziness of planning a wedding. We finished setting up our home and started to get used to our life as husband and wife.

J U L Y

July was another quiet month because we were still recuperating and getting used to married life. We celebrated 4th of July with my family at a state park and spent the day hanging in trees. 🙂

A U G U S T

In August, Tommy and I went to Wildwood with my mom, brother and his girlfriend for about a week. It was a nice little trip with lots of family time. We also went down the shore almost every weekend this month after because we realized that we had spent most of our time inside this summer.

S E P T E M B E R

In September Tommy learned to surf! It was such a cool day and really awesome for me to be apart of. The rest of the month was pretty quiet. Tommy took me on a really fun mini golf date to celebrate being married for 4 months and bought me a new pair of boots.

O C T O B E R

We crossed off one of our fall bucket list items and went apple picking in October. This was such a fun time, I even blogged about the day here.

N O V E M B E R

In November we celebrated our first married Thanksgiving! I also surprised Tommy with a wetsuit and a trip to Ocean City, Maryland this month. We had a nice little trip, and can hardly wait for it to warm up again so we can go back!

D E C E M B E R

We celebrated our First Christmas being married. Spent tons of time with family. Baked lots and lots of cookies. Exchanged presents. We also visited the tree in NYC with my brother and his girlfriend, and my cousin and her boyfriend.

It’s hard not to look back on this year with gratefulness in my heart. Even though it was a little hard, and there were lots of changes, God still showed up and brought so much joy to my life this year. I cannot wait for 2017!

Okay so today I decided it’s finally the day to recap the vacation Tommy and I went on to the Bahamas almost two months ago! 🙁 I can’t believe it’s been that long already and I still miss it so much. I kept putting it off because when we were on vacation we took all our pictures on Tommy’s phone and I thought it would be easy to send them to mine but by the end of the vacation we had over 100 pictures so it wasn’t as easy as I thought. I wanted to wait until I had the pictures on my phone so I could use as many as I wanted in the post but it looks like that isn’t ever going to happen so I’m just going to do my best to recap it the pictures that I do have on my phone before I forget too many details of it.

We went to Freeport, Bahamas at the end of August. The trip was actually a graduation gift from Tommy and my best friend Kristin. They surprised me with it and it was by far the best gift ever, I literally couldn’t think of something better if I tried. So anyway it was a four night, five day trip to an all inclusive resort and it was so much fun.

When I went to book the flight it accidentally got booked to fly out of Pittsburgh instead of Philadelphia like they purchased from Groupon so at first this was really bad and I tried to get it changed because Pittsburgh is over a six our drive from my house. I called and explained that it was supposed to be from Philadelphia not Pittsburgh but they told me that it was too late to change it and I would have to pay 500$ to fix it. There was no way I was paying that much money so we decided we would just figure it out and we did. We drove to Pittsburgh the night before the flight and stayed in a hotel and flew out the next morning. It actually turned out to be a fun little trip (minus the ride back) but it was worth it.

Tommy driving through a mountain to Pittsburgh! (Blurry sorry)

We flew out on a Thursday morning and got to the resort around 2ish I believe. We had to wait around for check in and it was raining the first day anyway so once we got settled in we took a 2 hour nap. We were exhausted from all the traveling and the nap was glorious. Once we woke up we decided to go and explore. I still have the first view of that water etched into my memory. I’ll never get over how beautiful the beach is.

Our days consisted of waking up, going to the buffet to get breakfast then heading down to the beach to relax. We did a lot of reading (I was reading the Mingling of Souls by Matt Chandler and Tommy just read the Bible). We went in the ocean a few times but there was a lot of palm tree branches in the water and it freaked me out to step on them lol. There was also a gorgeous pool that I think we only went in once but was also fun to sit by. For lunch we would head back to our room, change and go back to the buffet. The buffet had pretty good food but there was so so much and we literally ate way too much the whole time we were there (but that’s what vacations for right 😉 ).

After lunch we would hang out for a bit, sometimes go back to the beach but it rained a lot while we were there so sometimes that wasn’t an option. If we were stuck in our room it honestly didn’t bother us too much, we hung out and talked or watched Gossip Girl on my kindle ;). We played tennis one afternoon too and also went to the gym once too (yes this was Tommy’s idea haha). Also before we got ready for dinner we would try to always remember to take a dip in the Jacuzzi 🙂 I’m actually really wishing I could do that right about now!

For dinner there were two options – you could either go back to the buffet, which had different types of food every night – of course we went to Italian night haha – or you could make reservations to go to one of the restaurants in the resort. One night we went to the Italian restaurant, which was pretty good and on our 10 month anniversary we went to an Asian restaurant, which was different but still pretty good. It was really exciting getting to celebrate our 10 month anniversary in the Bahamas.

After dinner we usually got drinks at the bar, and sat in this sitting room sort of place that was near the bar. This was actually something that we kind of felt like we had to do – to enjoy the time we had there the most we could – but our introverted selves wouldn’t have minded staying in the room and hanging out together after dinner haha. It was fun sitting and talking with Tommy at the bar though.

So that’s basically it. Some fun/interesting stories include:

A guy came up to us on the beach and asked if we wanted to buy any drugs from him so that was interesting lol
There was another woman who makes money off of tourists and walks up and down the beach and literally just shouts at the girls “Hey lady… hair braided?” and she must have asked me about 5 times while we were there haha Tommy and I now have a joke about it and we’ll just randomly say it to each other now.

Tommy bought a conch shell that’s really pretty.
We didn’t get home until I think 1 in the morning the night we landed because we had to drive back from Pittsburgh and the next day was literally misery lol
There was a crab next to our room door the one night that we names Henry and there were stray little cats on the island and Tommy named one Arturo.

There was a lady that must have been on drugs in the Jacuzzi talking to everyone one day

I think that’s all I can remember. I honestly wish I could go back tomorrow. It was so much fun and so relaxing. The only thing that we didn’t do that we wanted to was go paddle boarding but I kind of chickened out because I got scared to paddle at the waves lol. Maybe one day we’ll get to go back again.

Year In Review: 2016!