On September 11th, my husband and I celebrated 10 years of marriage. Never a day that we've been really eager to pop the champagne corks, at least since 2001, we spent our first anniversary at a San Francisco Giants game with a 5 month old baby, and it's been all kids, all the time since then.

Along the way, my mom has always said that we needed to take a getaway vacation, just the two of us, and leave the kids with them. We didn't really take a honeymoon, she said, and we haven't been away from the kids for more than a night here or there in 10 years.

So, egged on by cheap cruise fares and my parents' apparent willingness to take on the Lauck Monsters for a week, I booked a seven day cruise to Mexico for me and the hubs back in January. We requested the time off, and I paid for the trip and set aside some spending money. I finally got a new passport and then promptly went into procrastination mode.

Three months away from departure turned into two weeks from departure in the blink of an eye, and I found myself with a mountain of laundry, a house that really should have just been condemned and burned to the ground, and three kids who would NOT be at school for full days as advertised, but would be on 8 AM to noon schedule for the entire week because yes, I booked my vacation for conference week. Add to that that my poor husband showed up three days before departure with chills, a high fever and an aching throat. He climbed into our bed and stayed there, making these pathetic moaning noises and weird snores that sounded like an alien invasion in my bed. That's a good way to spice up a marriage, let me tell you.

I hastily packed, got my hair done, dropped off the kids and ran for the airport with my husband still making whimpering noises. We brought some headache medicine and some runny nose medicine and some cough drops. Mama was not canceling the vacation for a little random sickness. I'm sorry, I didn't wait 10 years for a romantic vacation with my man to be sidetracked by phlegm and alien noises. I'm like, you can lay in the cabin and moan and I'll drink Pina Coladas and eat nachos. We're good. It's all good.

Shored up with over-the-counter meds, we (meaning I) enjoyed our short flight to LA, and made our way to Long Beach, where we checked in and finally, after two hours of standing in the direct sun outside the terminal, we were allowed to board the cruise ship. We headed straight to our stateroom, dropped off our luggage, and checked out the view from our private balcony. Because we are swanky like that.

Then we headed up to the poolside buffet and got some onion rings. Wooooooooooo!

We returned to our room and participated in the Super! Fun! Safety drill with the life preservers and the muster stations and learned how we might avoid a Titanic Fate by arriving at our designated station in an orderly fashion. I was annoyed by people who did not take it seriously, because I am a rule follower, and there were people who were having fun and not standing placidly in line. My husband, in fact. Having fun. Must have been the cold medicine. Anyway.

Once we were released to our leisure, we did a lap around the ship's decks. Then we cleaned up a bit and headed down for dinner. After a pleasant meal, we contemplated seeing whatever the show was that night, or gambling in the casino, but I was tired and thought maybe a quick nap would be a good idea.

14 hours later, my husband shook me awake and said something about breakfast. Or was that brunch? I don't even remember.

Despite a continuing sore throat that turned out to be strep after all (this from the man who loves to get swabbed for strep at the first sign of irritation, only to be denied again and again) we vacationed on.

We ate and slept and walked around and ate some more. And then slept. We saw some cheesy shows and threw away some money in the casino. We took some cheesy portraits which were treated to some heavy duty photoshop filtering and gave us a holy glow - and we bought them anyway because hello? HOLY GLOW. We dressed up, and once? We spent an entire afternoon wearing nothing at all. I know, ewwwww. But seriously? We could! So we did!

We had a few ports of call, and I have some funny stories to tell about those, but I'll save that for another time. I need to upload my photos and figure out the holy glow treatment before sharing those.

The real heroes of this story are my parents, who not only had all three kids for nine days, but had all three of them sick, on a half-day schedule, with boatloads of homework and who took it upon themselves to clean up my house while we were gone. There were several dump runs involved - this was no spit-shine job for sure, and it was incredibly kind of them to reclaim our house from the pages of Better Dumps and Landfills.

When we returned home, I walked through the door and immediately felt hopeful that I could reclaim order and structure in our lives - which combined with the fresh attitude gained from days spent sleeping whenever the mood struck me, eating whatever wasn't nailed down and swilling drinks served in giant hollowed out coconuts in the company of my husband, away from the distraction of the computer and email and television and cell phones and the kids and all that good stuff, was the best morale boost I could have ever hoped for.

My husband was vindicated by his diagnosis on return of strep throat, and I followed suit a day later, and upped the ante with a double ear infection, but you know what? I don't feel like complaining. I'm over the worst of it, and I'm looking ahead to The Month of Jenny, in which I will turn 36. I'm feeling better than I have in a long time. And that's pretty great, considering I didn't let myself be fully aware of how bad things had been.

Mom, Dad, I know that what you did for us was above and beyond, and I just want you to know that it was not only needed and appreciated, but very well could be the kick in the butt that we needed over here to get this circus train firmly back on the rails. Thanks a million.