Vacation Part Two

We had a lot of fun on the cruise. The girls loved being able to eat ice cream whenever they wanted. I think that was the highlight for them for sure. They ate ice cream for breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack and bedtime snack. I wondered if they would get sick of the ice cream but NOPE! They kept going back for more! This fancy ice cream swan was brought to me by Callen - thanks Bud!

Tom and I had just as much fun as the girls. Do you love our self portrait picture? This was after many takes. I think we need to work on doing SP. I brought my little point and shoot camera and am a little sad I didn't bring my big camera. The pictures weren't near as good nor near as fun to take.

Cassidy finally made a friend (she's a little shy) on the last day. Here they are playing mini golfing on the top of the ship. What a view!

Cassidy and Abby won a free Build-a-Bear and when we went to get them we somehow got three! So we asked Callen if he wanted one (I didn't think he would go for it) and he said SURE! So the girls taught him how to stuff the bear, add the little heart after rubbing it on your head, lips, heart, knees, eyes (we made up all kinds of things to see if Callen would do it and he did!) then dressing the bear, naming it and playing with it. Good times for the kiddos and I thought they were darn cute!

Abby stuffing her bear Sally.

The boys (Cade, Callen and Cooper) taught the girls (Cassidy and Abby) about video games on this trip. They spent a lot of time at Underground Tokyo playing. One night Chris and Monica and Tom and I sat outside and talked while the kids played. Afterward Cassidy couldn't stop giggling about some pattle throwing incident. She would just spontaneously break out in giggles thinking about it. When she went to bed that night the last thing she did before she fell asleep was giggle to herself. I loved that moment. There's nothing better than a memory that keeps you laughing hours later!
Oh and did you know there were Pirates on the ship! Cute little Pirates that I wanted to squeeze and hug and kiss to death! Abby loved the kids area. She had so much fun going there each day for a few hours. She made lots of friends and made crafts, sang songs, played games. This day was Pirate day!

Dad and Abby snorkeling in the blue waters of St Maarten.
Abby saw a starfish and loves to tell you all about it if you ask.

Cassidy was so brave! She went on a Snuba dive with Tom. This is where you share an air tank and go down about 30-40 ft. You don't have to be certified and it's great to get you used to scuba. She was very nervous at first but did it anyway and got to see a sunken ship! I was so proud of her!!!

Mom and Abby hanging out on the boat waiting for Dad and Cass.

Dad and Cass after their dive.

In St Thomas we went to a The Butterfly Farm. It was so beautiful and we saw a lot of different types of butterfly's. We got a tour and learned all about the life span of a butterfly. Cooper was the lucky person of the day and had a butterfly land on his head! We spent almost two hours there! I was in heaven with all the beautiful plants and flowers. I wanted to come home and plant my own butterfly garden! (we'll see about that. St Thomas does have slightly MORE rain than AZ!)

Of course Monica and I had to have a picture in front of the Tiffany & Co store in St. Thomas! Yes, we did go in and look, No we didn't buy anything!

Here is Tom and Cassidy in Porto Rico. We were sad that the cruise ship dropped us off her at 5pm. We didn't want to walk around Porto Rico with a bunch of kids at night so we did a little shopping then headed back to the ship. I was impressed with the architecture of the buildings and how nicely maintained they are. I loved all the colors of the buildings! Pink, yellow, blue, purple, orange. All right next to each other. How come we can't get away with that here? I would love a yellow house with a bight pink door!

Cassidy laying out by the pool. Taking a break from swimming.

Do you love that Abby picked out this chapter book from the ship's library and is reading it by the pool. She's such a funny little girl! We had no doubt that she was really reading it too!
The girls loved the nightly towel animals. Every night there would be a new animal and chocolates left on our beds. Funny how Tom and I never got a chocolate though.

This was up at the top of the boat as we were leaving Miami.
It was such a fun cruise and we were so glad we could bring the girls. The cruises we have done before were nice and we had a lot of fun but we always worried about being away from the girls. This was the best of both! If we wanted to be alone, we sent them off to kids club, if we didn't we just hung out. Mostly we all had a great time together and isn't that what a vacation is supposed to be?

Ratings:
Carnival Cruise Line
*
Porto Rico
*
St Thomas
*****
St Maarten
***
(one more post to go - Florida and Burn Notice pictures!)

I'm Back

We had a GREAT vacation and I can't wait to write all about it. I have taken over 300 pictures on my little point and shoot camera that I want to somehow make into a video. I have lots to do to get back into the swing of real life. I love a good vacation but then it's so hard to get back into daily life!

Here are some of the highlights from our trip:

Holding an alligator that was a big as Abby
Going to one of the top 10 beaches in the USA - Crandon Beach, Key Biscayne Fl
Seeing with my own eyes the waterways of Ft. Lauderdale aka Venice of the Americas
Shopping in St. Thomas
Snorkeling in St. Marteen
Walking the beautiful streets of Puerto Rico
Watching Cassidy Snuba and Abby Snorkel
Tom winning a "ship on a stick" for playing Name that Tune!
Getting my first tan of the season
Eating fresh cut up fruit whenever I wanted-pure bliss
Driving around in a convertible and wanting one for my very own - the girls do too!
Seeing the Burn Notice set and watching them film on location by the water.
Staying in a hotel with the Telemundo Latino Pageant Contestants (all 45 of them!)
Being lazy and not having to worry about cooking for 2 whole weeks!

and best of all: knowing my Aunt Janet is getting better - slowly - but better every day. This is such a blessing.

There is alot more but I'll have to write the details later. I have been keeping a little journal so I could write it all down on the blog. Don't want to forget this trip anytime soon. We sure are lucky Tom has clients all over so we can tag along with him on business trips!

Check back and I'll have all the details!
(sorry about the spelling - I'm on the laptop and i don't have my super duper spell check machine on this thing!)

Fun in the sun!

Lee, Aimee, Mindy, Lori, Me, Monica, Traci, Michelle, Angie

O.K. no one guessed. I suppose I should have given clues. That wasn't very fair of me. However, shame on you - those that read this blog and didn't comment. I know you have been reading because my counter is going up everyday. Where's the comments? Where's the love??? JK

I had a fabulous trip with the girls from book club. We went on a 4 day cruise to Ensenada Mexico. I did relax, I did eat food that I didn't prepare(a lot of food!), I danced the night away every night, I did read-however there were still interruptions(I didn't mind) and I had a blast. I think I laughed the whole entire time. A smile never left my face. My favorite was when we would tell people(when they asked)that we were with our book club and we had 35 kids between the 9 of us. Their faces were priceless! Loved it!!!

One of my favorite things we did was look at every single person on that ship as we tried to decide what character he/she (mostly he) would be in our book. (Twilight) "Is that Edward?" "Could that be Jasper?" "The werewolf is following us again!" "How about her for Esme, Rosalie, Alice and Bella?" (we didn't find any of them but we did find a few Edwards, and one Jasper). Seriously, we checked out every guy there and it was perfectly legal because we were doing it for our "casting session!" We were obsessed! If you haven't read that book, go get it right now. Barnes and Nobel is open till 11pm. Go....go.....I'll be here when you get back! I don't think the cruise would have been as fun if we hadn't involved that book so much. Well........o.k. it would have but still that book was the highlight.

So I think the cruise was such a hit we will be doing it next year. Tom and the girls came to the airport to pick me up and Tom asked us if we were glad to be back and did we miss our families..............I think he got a few half hearted yah's and kind of's. Poor guy. It was very nice to not have to worry about anyone but yourself. However, it was an eye opener because we had to do a lot of thinking on this trip. Usually our husbands do the thinking, the tipping, the planning, the protecting. We didn't have that and it made us realize how grateful we are for our men who take such good care of us.

I'm going to need help remembering some of our favorite quotes that were said on the trip. So if you can post those favorite comments - the ones we laughed so hard over - please do so.

Here's some of my favorite pictures. These are not edited sorry!

Here we are the night of the midnight buffet and dancing out on the pool deck. It was SOOOO cold we had to grab towels and use them as blankets.

Monica and I doing a self portrait at the airport.

Getting ready for the boat sinking drill. Don't we look pretty?

Below is our guardian angel Ignacio (our tour guide who took us under his wing)

That story is being saved for it's very own post!

However, this is also a picture of the yummiest mexican food ever!

Having fun dancing. I think that will be my new form of exercise.

Here we are dancing the night away. I Loved dancing with Aimee!

I was picking up a few new moves! Sorry Aimee - don't kill me!