Our life & how we became full time residents on the Villa Vie Residential Cruise | World Cruise E32

we have some really big news so stay tuned to the end of the video oh yes it's such good news so hang out with [Music] us hey friends I'm Steve and I'm Angela and we are midli cruising so today's going to be a little different we thought we would sit down and tell you a little bit about us we're getting so many questions about all the things um are you retired what did you do there's just been so many questions we thought that would be a good time to start uh and tell you a little bit about ourselves so if it's morning time when you're watching this go grab a cup of coffee or maybe a tea if it's the afternoon maybe get a big bowl of popcorn and a craft beer a craft beer maybe an oldfashioned something uh so you can hang out with us for a little bit and chat we are still patiently waiting for uh the Odyssey to take off each day we're getting updates and so we're just about there so hopefully in the near future we're going to be out of here yes for sure um a little bit of background we met in the seventh grade um we went to the same middle school and we're basically Neighbors um I was originally born in Northern I was born in Northern Indiana and when I was maybe in kindergarten in first grade um re relocated to Florida with my mother and brothers and sisters and I had sort of the same story uh moved from missoury down to Florida uh just about the same time what a coincidence it was fate so we were really close friends all through middle school and high school and one of our fun stories is okay now we were really good kids um but in seventh grade we skipped school um we both told our moms we were sick and um we stayed home and we walked over to site which is a local convenience store in brenon Florida and we bought chips aoy chocolate chip cookies and milk and went back to his place and I think I watched TV and you played on your uh Commodore 64 dot matrix the whole computer thing and that was our big you know Rebellion as seventh graders but um fast forward great friends all through Middle School and High School uh even enrolled our first year in college so we took a lot of classes together and and then I tell everyone about a junior year at College he got really hot and it was all over for me then I'm blushing so fast forward um we got married uh in our 20s somewhere and uh this coming anniversary will be 30 years of marriage so I think I think I'll keep them I was a deputy sheriff in Central Florida and did my entire career there and retired in 2021 with a full pension and I was a middle and high school teacher predominantly teaching English and reading a little bit of HX I had a my other certification to do that so I got to do that for a few years but mainly English and reading I uh was a bull USF Tampa um preo football years rewind a little bit in 2009 we went to Nicaragua we went on a mission trip and we fell in love with the country the people the culture just everything about it um we wound up buying property there in 201 11 and we hosted Mission teams for 10 years everything from medical missions my brother's a doctor so he came and did some medical missions for us we had plumbers installing toilets we had electricians we had a hair sauce come and do free haircuts um we worked closely with a lot of the local churches and basically asked them what they needed and how we could assist so any we kind of covered the gamut of all things missions for about 10 years there and in 2018 there was a civil unrest in the country um and that was in April of 2018 um a few months later we wound up going to another part of Nicaragua which was more of a touristy area so there wasn't really any problems there at the time W up buying a place there so once we did uh fully retire we wound up spending most of our time there in Nicaragua and it's happens to be a cruise port we our Cruiser so it's fun watching cruise ships roll in um so that's a little bit about our our life in Nicaragua and it we think if this adventure ever slows down or ends we may go back there we are renting our place out to a friend in Nicaragua hi Bob hi Bob so we're not uh letting it go um we're holding on to it because you know you never know where life will take you um and we're very comfortable there so we really we really love Central America May k so 2018 was quite a year for us um same year of the uprising in Nicaragua that same month and almost to the day um I'm will cry it's SP so long in 2018 I lost my mother wow you think you can talk about things so freely after time but wow you talk about it and then 6 weeks later she lost her eldest brother mhm and then sometime after that uh she was getting uh two surgeries on well a surgery on each foot to repair some problems that uh she had and think of planer fasciitis on steroids yes and had that uh had that repaired so that was on a Thursday you had surgery and uh this for the second foot so she's laid up on a Saturday morning and uh I woke up went into the kitchen to make coffee and just things went black for me and I woke up sort of sliding down uh the kitchen wall so I look over I hear thud he's like coming off the wall like he fainted and I was like whoa well it's not like I could run to him I had it was the day before I had foot surgery so I'm laid up um so we get him to come too he comes and sits on the couch relaxes a little bit I start messaging my brother the doctor what should we do kind of thing because he seems fine at this point you know sometimes you think oh I just got up too fast that kind of thing so we W up going about a block or two away we were in Winter Haven Florida at the time and he um we went to the pharmacist to we wanted to use the blood pressure cuff and so the pharmacist said well I'm not busy let me come check and they came out and she came out and checked them and she said you know your blood pressure is fine but your heart rate is really slow do you remember what she said wasn't it 40 something I think so in the 40s so it was in the 40s she said you need to go to the hospital get checked out this isn't okay so keep in mind foot surgery I'm on one of those the wheelies the wheelie where you have your knee bent then you push with the other foot like a skateboard and I have to drive so thankfully it was my left foot in the big boot so I could run drive with my right foot and so went one block away to the walkin clinic MH and Steve go ahead the the doctor came in she had just uh done a stint with a cardiologist so she was very familiar with Cardiology and she knew I was a deputy there in the county and she said I tell you what I've already refunded your payment I've refunded your payment you and Angela go back to your house pack a bag full of clothes your phones your chargers and everything and go straight to the hospital CU you're going to be there you need some serious Advanced uh Cardiac Care so that's exactly what we did um went back and packed our bags and we went straight to uh Lakeland Regional and I wheeled my way in and they thought I was the patient I'm like no it's him I know they took us took us in and surprisingly it's one of the busiest his heart places and there was nobody there which they said it never happens Saturday night at 6:00 in an emergency room and no one was there yeah so they took us straight back they hooked them all up um and it was right before shift change I think shift change was at seven so nurses are coming in and out doctors we see the nurse walk over to the screen and she goes oh you're going to need a pacemaker we're like what and then that next nurse comes over looks at the screen oh yeah you're going to I'm thinking wait what and then shift change happens same thing new nurses come in they're looking we hadn't seen the do you know the doctor hasn't really come and done anything yet oh you're going to need a pacemaker so this is what we're hearing I remember picking up my phone and messaging um I think I a messaged evet the pastor's wife and said um Steve can't make praise team tomorrow morning might need to cover him during Service uh it was just such a whirlwind yeah so I felt like when we were in the emergency room I sort of felt like a uh a Ford tractor and the doctors were basically saying you're going to need a pacemaker so it's just a quick fix just like an alternator and a tractor you just need a new alternator well first Steve had the heart cath test um the cardiologist came out to me and said his Plumbing looks really good he's where he should be for his age um and this is three or 4 days in with all the testing and he said I need to pass you on to an electrophysiologist and let them check cuz obviously there's something very wrong but it's not your plumbing your plumbing looks good so few days go by um they do a Mr a heart MRI uh they do a stress test which best story ever I think you need to share this eat more popcorn drink more coffee this one's worth it okay so they wheel me in uh to the stress test area and they they have three rooms and then they you're you're on Deck for one of these rooms where they administer the test and it's the chemical uh stress test where they inject uh I guess an adrenaline or something to to get your heart going so they get me in a room now I'm uh I'm the next one to have the test done and in the room next to me let's say I'm in three in two they're administering the test to an older lady so I hear her explain uh everything that's going to happen it's going to elevate your heart rate uh we're going to do this for 10 or 20 seconds then I'll give you another dose which will bring your heart back down it's basically painless they just look for all these indicators on all their Machines of uh how your heart's doing during this test well they administer uh this adrenaline or or what it whatever it may be if you're a doctor or a nurse and you work in a Cardiology unit let me know what that is that they get you with but anyway it speeds our heart rate up and all I know is the Ladi said uh wait hold on stop stop uh everything's going black it hurts it hurts I can't feel my arm um I say now that was the stress test they just want to see how reacted hearing that next door they were probably actors behind a curtain oh my goodness and then and then uh everything worked out fine it worked out great for the lady but then when they come to administer me oh my gosh he's like no I can't do it please don't don't do whatever you did to that lady to me that was the real stress test yeah anyway that test went fine I passed with flying colors it's just I just have uh an electrical issue and they don't really know the cause but they know one thing the pacemaker uh could fix it so a lot of consultations between the cardiologist electrophysiologist and uh some different universities that they consulted with um so some really great medical minds and I went into surgery for an hour or two I don't know I don't really remember it and then uh yeah I'm good as new now so defibrillator pacemaker he has the the two for one deal yeah so everything's fine and I get a yearly checkup and uh it's worked wonderfully and we will jump off the ship um every year we'll probably jump off the ship more often than that but we'll jump off the ship every year so he can have a checkup they need to check his b battery um to make sure he's you know it's still going and we can really do that anywhere in the world we have a cardiologist in both Nicaragua and the United States but sometimes you kind of need to go back to that homebased doctor so we'll still do that every year um we already had the first one planned and it's actually not too far off so we'll be jumping off for a week or two and of course um we probably didn't share earlier but we do have one daughter and she's 27 so we'll go visit her and we already have her schedule to come visit us too um they have a friend and family program for the uh V Odyssey so she'll be able to come visit us and of course we'll go see her so we were back in the States in March and of this year 2024 and I'm a YouTuber I love watching YouTubes she loves watching YouTube well you have your favorites too I started watching Trent and Ally who are van lifers um never playing on living in a van I just really enjoyed them and years later now they're doing constr you know building their own house and have they have a couple kids it's just funny how you've kind of become part of their family and um uh life uncontained where they build um that they built their home from scratch out of container homes I've been watching them for years before you know before they had yeah prek kids and now they have three you know so I've just always enjoyed YouTube and then Steve uses YouTube for what we call the rabbit hole like I want to be able to make the best pizza in the world and I'll watch every video on how to make pizza dough and then pizza sauce and by the way you've not had pizza until you've had Steve we were lucky enough to have a woodf Fired Pizza Oven in Nicaragua and so I really went down the rabbit hole with dough pizza sauce best ingredients fermentation times protein content of flow see what I mean this is all from YouTube it's pretty deep so Steve said hey let's let's YouTube this adventure this v v Odyssey Adventure traveling the world World um plus this will give us if we can get to the point where we make money we can do better excursions and day trips and do all the cool things um and I do like cool things yeah he likes cool things oh that's why you like me um so um that is why we started it it's just been we're just we're under the 4month mark but we're almost to the 4month Mark we actually tried 10 years ago uh we were big hikers and we did a few videos on the app Trail but that was 10 years ago you know we couldn't even do it so we Revisited this started it just under four months ago and we already monetized a week or so ago so that's what that was our goal um thank you so much by the way thank you so much I mean you will allow us to do excursions which which will give us even better things to film so that was really our goal I know a lot of people say oh I just want to share and that's great but I always you know we need to make a little money to do cooler things so see if you can experience more craft beers all over the world um and just to be able to do all the things we want to do and speaking about the Appalachian Trail have any of you been on the Appalachian Trail let us know in the comments below I think that'd be so cool to know that uh you know friends of ours on YouTube have hiked sections or the whole thing wow that'd be cool yeah and we we uh by the way we were midlife hikers for years that was my email like that was our thing and once we decided to do this adventure we became midlife Cruisers you know we do have like probably a good 50 cruises under our belt we lived in Florida we had access to five Cruise ports so every spring break every summer like for so many years that's just what we did and then once we retired we started doing those month-long trans Atlantics you know really um spreading our wings and I kind of convinced him let's take one year and ship hop and you know cuz I know how to find the best deals vacations to go or Cruise Plum or last second deals or whatever we needed to do I'm like we can just get off and get on the next one like back to back to back to back to back um and so he kind of agreed so I wrote it all out and I tried to do like a three-month window um and we had to factor in things like We'll always want Wi-Fi I'll always want want decent coffee okay does that ship allow laundry or not all these little extra things and no matter what I did and I mean I mean I know how to get some good deals we couldn't find anything that beat the cost of this Villa V that like I said we didn't even know about it until March because uh I think it was JJ Cruz's did a video on it so we watched their um Cru video I'm like what is this so I talked to him about it and talked him in to it ladies keep doing it don't give up because it took me well I won't say it took me too long because by the time I first learned and before I was making the call to the um to Ann to Ann the she's like the head of her sales supervisor of sales something like that we called the in and we made a few phone calls and next thing you know we were buying this and it had only been a week from the dayj Cruis video to the okay we're we're buying this um it took me a couple days to convince them to the we're doing it we got to do it so here we are um I hope uh maybe you're on your second cup of coffee now or thanks so much for staying with us if you lasted this whole video um hey for those who stuck around for the big news the exciting news we have been going back and forth with v and we have negotiated a deal uh something that's fair for both vbe and for us and we are staying in the ocean view woohoo never thought that would happen we got it you know we got it all worked out they're happy we're happy um it's amazing thank you V yeah thank you v v woohoo and if you're considering uh coming on this cruise with us there is a link below in the description and just click on that and it gives you really all the information we get a ton of questions each video and most of the answers are contained in the website so take a look scroll around mhm remember you can rent a segment and a lot of people are like oh I wouldn't know if I'd like it well come try it out the segment's anywhere about 30ish I think it's 31 or 32 it's up to like 120ish days and segments are based on a region so it might be the South American section uh so Caribbean right Asia so if there's a certain section you're interested in and you want to rent a segment they have a segment kind of rental price um and you can just call the sales adviser they'll talk to you and you can work it out um but just give them a call they're super friendly and try it out that way and then come hang out with us thanks so so so much for coming along with us um a big shout out to those who've been buying us coffees it's been amazing amazing amazing we really appreciate it um we will I'll get Steve to pop up the names here somehow cuz he's the editing guy not me um I'm just along for the ride I do comments he does the editing yeah thank you all that have sent us uh coffees uh we've had some and they've been amazing yeah when they're on you they're extra good for some reason for sure so thank you thank you from the bottom of our heart thanks for coming along thank you for joining in this journey with us and if you have more questions as always put them in the comments below give us a thumbs up all those YouTu things we're supposed to say and we have a lot more videos planned and scheduled so stick around bye friends bye friends [Music]