Vacation, Day 4 & 5

Day 4 was another day at sea filled with relaxing, eating, sun, volleyball, more eating, black jack and some funny comedians.

Riley, Tim, Marcie, Brandon, Jen, Alli, Neil, Britni, Mckell and Daryl are in front. We're hanging out, waiting for the comedians.... :)

Day 5: Grand Cayman

One word best describes this place and it's BEAUTIFUL. If we were rich, we'd definitely have a beach house here. It's an expensive island; our money is worth 80 cents to their dollar. No one was trying to get us to buy anything, it was just nice and relaxing. We could have gone swimming with the stingrays, but decided to hit up 7 Mile Beach and do some snorkeling. It was a perfect day.

View of Grand Cayman from our ferry.

Lots of cool pirate ships in the Cayman Islands, also known as the Pirate Islands.

We had to take a ferry from our ship, to the island.

Nate, Mark, Tim & Riley - These guys are so much fun to hang out with! :)

On the pier with our ship in the background.

Tim, snorkeling. We saw some cool fish and we even saw a stingray of our own!

Enjoying the beautiful beach. (Swimming suit pictures are embarrassing.)

A mermaid in the sand.

Beautiful water. No big waves, which I was actually a little disappointed about. Waves are my favorite part of the ocean. I'm not complaining though! :)

The beach house we'd buy if we were rich.

Crystal clear water.

Our awesome ship.

There was the coolest magician on the ship. He would come around to the dinning room tables at night and do tricks. I called him my magician. He gave me the four of diamonds card with his name and email address on it and told me to email him. Kind of funny.

Vacation, Day #3

COZUMEL, MEXICO

We were planning to see the Mayan Ruins of Tulum on this day, BUT we totally missed the boat, quite literally. They said that not seeing the ruins of Tulum when you're in Cozumel would be like going to Paris and not seeing the Eiffel Tower. We were really bummed. I wanted to cry. Tim and I were the only ones from our group planning to go to Tulum. So there we were, all alone, with nothing to do. Thank goodness we happened to run into an awesome group of friends from our group. We started out by getting a taxi. Our driver was really cool. He would take us anywhere we wanted to go, basically all day, for a cheap price. First we went shopping. I loaded up on some loot for the kiddos. Then we had lunch at a little taco shop, at the market, in the heart of Cozumel. Then our driver dropped off Tim and I to see some different Mayan ruins, San Gervasio. Still cool, just not as cool. Then our driver took us to a BEAUTIFUL beach, where the rest of our group was hanging out.

Our huge ship.

Taco shop.

I ordered chips and salsa and this is what I got. Funny.

Meat hanging in the market place.

Daryl, Chad and Tim

Pretty palm trees.

SAN GERVASIO

There were iguanas everywhere! :)

Beautiful Beach!:)

Us with our taxi driver, Manuel.

Vacation, Day #2

The second day, was a day at sea. Our staterooms were so dark, you could never tell what time it was. We would always end up sleeping till 10 or 11 am, because it was so dark. Very nice. After a yummy buffet breakfast, Tim and I found a spot on the deck to lay out in the sun. It never got too hot on the boat. There was always a perfect breeze. After basking in the sun we had a buffet lunch. Oh the food!!! It was insane. There was food everywhere, all the time! Then we had a nap and got ready for formal night at dinner. After dinner we went to some shows and played shuffle board. It sounds like a pretty lazy day, but it's just what I needed after coming off a week of graveyard shifts. I don't want to forget to mention, the day we were leaving for our cruise I woke up with a HUGE cold sore. I was totally bummed. I took the medicine and used Abreva, but it was too late. It was already giant and had to run it's course. I swear everyone in the airport was staring at it. I wanted to hide!

The fun people we went with.

Tim and I at formal night. I wore an outfit I wear to church. Not very formal, but oh well.

Some cool pics of the lobby of our HUGE ship:

Our Vacation, Day #1

Tim and I were able to go on a 7 night cruise to the Western Caribbean last week. It was AMAZING. We went with 13 other people, which made it even more fun because there was always someone to hang out with. My mom was so wonderful to stay with the kids for a whole week, well actually 9 days if you include our travel time. Thank you so so so so much mom! You're the best! When we dropped the kids off before we left, I was an emotional wreck and had no idea how I was going to handle being without my kids for that long. I missed them lots, but I have to admit, it was nice to have a kid-free week, only having to worry about ourselves for once and really enjoying one another. All of the people we went with work at the same place, or at least their spouses do. We all used our September bonuses to buy the cruise. All work and no play is never good, right? At first I was having some buyers remorse about going, but now I'm SO glad we went!

This is a picture of Miami taken from the ship before we set sail.

A view of the classic red, white and blue whales tale on Carnival cruise ships.

Dinner the first evening.

You know on cruise ships how they're always taking your pictures and then if you want them you have to buy them. Well I got clever... we would go look at the pictures and then I'd sneakily take a picture of the picture. Shhhh. Don't tell! ;)

and the PACKERS WIN the XLV SUPER BOWL!!

Just have to give a shout out to the PACKERS!!! They won the SUPER BOWL! My husband is soooo stinkin' excited!! Go Packers! :)

Here's Tim headed to the super bowl party in his Packers attire. One of our friends' parents owns the Payson movie theater, so they invited us to come and watch the big game on the big screen. It was lots of fun and the kids and fun too! So excited the Packers won!