Planning a Romantic Beach Vacation is Almost as Awesome as Being on a Romantic Beach Vacation

Confession: I have a borderline unhealthy relationship with airline miles.

I hoard them. I dream about them. My goal is to one day be like Scrooge McDuck and swim in them.

I try to pay for everything I can (groceries, bills, drinks, dinner, etc) with my various airline credit cards (paying off the full balance every month of course.) I also sign up for any free bonus offer I can get my hands on, and I even use those mileage portal thingies to do my online shopping.

So far this has worked like gangbusters.

But though we have amassed what has seemed like a mountain of miles, so far we've had to use them for responsible, unromantic things like flying back and forth across the country for job searches and visiting far-flung family over the holidays.

These are all great and worthy causes, of course, and I'm so happy we've been able to fly on so many airplanes without being driven to the poorhouse etc etc.

But! Meanwhile! Jared and I have not been on any sort of a vacation together since our honeymoon.

We haven't meant for it to be so long. We've read the studies. We know the importance of "weekend getaways" and "couple time" and "shaking things up." And although every few months one of us will start plotting some little mini adventure somewhere, just a night or two in some hotel or whatever, so far something has always come in the way of our taking the plunge. (Hint: it rhymes with $$)

But last week, when we had to use a giant chunk of my precious miles to book our upcoming trip to Iowa to take care of some business, I looked at our dwindling Mileage Plus account and declared:

We will use what's left of this hard-won bounty to go on a romantic vacation or so help me I don't know what!

And right then and there we booked two round trip tickets to Tulum for our anniversary at the end of July and now our miles bank may be empty but by gum our hearts are full.

I. am. thrilled. I can't stop thinking about it. Last night I stayed up in bed with my laptop just looking at pictures of the Caribbean Sea and reading all the glowing reviews of our hotel and boy oh boy I just hope we don't have a hurricane or a shark attack or a swine flu outbreak because I am going to lie on that beach and eat an entire bowl of guacamole off of my stomach.

And that is a fact.