August 12 of 12 (5 year anniversary!)

Yay! My 12 of 12 (courtesy of the fantastic Chad Darnell) is 2 days late posting, because I was off in the beautiful city of Long Beach celebrating my 5 year anniversary with Will (the boyfriend) and I was am biggest girl about the whole thing! I worked my little brain for months to come up with the perfect plan, perfect gift, perfect getaway and finally came up with this.

I really should preface my photos with the beginning of my day....months in planning and it almost went down in flames before it started. What you don't see in photos was that I somehow ended up on the schedule to work Sunday(the anniversary) night. After some desperate phone calls and wrangling I arranged to switch my Saturday night graveyard shift into a 2 hour shift and come in for one of the am servers on Sunday instead. But when I went out to my car on Saturday night at 10pm to drive to work, I had a flat tire. I finally arrived at work, one hour late for my 2 hour shift, with a donut on my car. Thankfully, the hotel owners took me in for the night (at their house, a strange and unnerving experience I hope not to repeat) so that I didn't have to drive another 20 miles on my ridiculously small spare tire at 1 am, and I reported back to work at 9am. After a horribly slow morning, we ended up packed to the gills 15 minutes before I was supposed to get off, resulting in actually leaving work and hour past when I was supposed to and then topping it all off with another hour wait for new tires.

Finally,I arrive home and we are off...sort of

Here I am trying to print out Will's gift and directions to the hotel without him seeing where we are actually going (I really wanted to surprise him) sadly I had to repeatedly yell at him, GET AWAY! GET AWAY, GET AWAY at a pitch that is usually only heard by canines and sonar equipment
And now, really, we are off...and Will is starting to get cranky.
The culmination of the cranky, in the car, after I asked him to wear a blindfold to facilitate the surprise, I will spare you the details, but he ended up taking a nap instead.
But, all of this changed when we arrived at our first stop...

The parking lot in Long beach where we kissed for the very first time, 5 years ago. And yes, I am a big sappy cheesy girl, but thankfully Will shares my sense of the cheese and we listened to our favorite song and kissed again in our parking lot before moving on to the next stop.
Will loves the old ocean liners (Titanic, Queen Elisabeth and Queen Mary) so we stayed on the only one of the 3 that is still above water.
Checking in on the Queen Mary....
Getting ready for dinner, which was originally planned for Sir Winston's, but ended up being the Chelsea, because we are Philistines who do not know how to follow a business casual dress code. By the way, for future reference, a collared shirt with jeans is not appropriate for fine dining on the Queen Mary
Our state room, note the portholes and the original wood paneling, pretty spiffy
Somebody must have known it was a special night, because somehow we ended up with fireworks during dinner
Mmmmm....steak and champagne (I ordered Merlot to be served with my meal, but it never appeared, whatever)
There was an orchid garnish on the plate and Will didn't believe I would actually eat it...a little note about me, I can almost never resist a dare.
After waiting almost a half hour for our tiramisu (it was apparently off somewhere with my Merlot) and a very nice walk on the deck, I gave Will his present (a flight lesson) and we passed out like the old people our graveyard working lifestyle has made us.