Caribbean Cruise!

We're back!

Chris and I took a two week vacation from August 9th to the 23rd. The first week we spent in Mesa. In planning our trip there we had three objectives: 1. See my sister-in-law Monica and her two little girls Alexis and Ryan (We have never met Ryan) who were visiting from Germany 2. See my sister Traci and her family before they move to Ohio 3. Spend time with the rest of our family and friends. This is how it paned out...

At the last minute Monica and the girls left two days before we got there because my brother Travis would be home from Iraq for R&R and they of course wanted to be there with him, so objective numero uno was kuput. Objective number two was mostly successful I'd say. We did get to see Traci and her two kids (+ one on the way! :) ) a few times but unfortunately her husband Rhett was deathly ill with pink eye, bronchitis, the works, so we only saw him once. Number three was a partial success. We were able to spend lots of time with my sister Tori and her family, and I did get to go to dinner with some friends, BUT my parents left for Chicago about 10 hours after we arrived, so we didn't get to spend hardly any time with them. We had the house to ourselves all week, it was nice to have a big place all to ourselves though! Here is Chris meditating at the bottom of the pool

Around midnight Friday night we flew to Florida. It was the worst! We were both just so completely exhausted because of how late it was and our flight was packed full so we couldn't lay down which is what I had been planning on doing. We had a couple hour lay over in Atlanta where I got some shut eye, I don't think Chris got any though. We eventually made it to Ft. Lauderdale and then took a half hour shuttle to the port of Miami where our ship was. The took all of our luggage off the bus and Chris went to put these special tags for the cruise and the bus driver who had unloaded our stuff grabs my airline tag from the top of the suitcase and says "You wont needs this!" and rips it off... in doing so he ripped the handle off my luggage!! We didn't tip him, to say the least. After going through security and a bunch of check in stations we finally made it on board The Carnival Liberty! The ship was so neat! It was huge! It had a couple pools and hot tubs, mini golf, a big theater where all the shows were, a casino, multiple restaurants and more! Sunday was a day at sea, so we just relaxed and layed out and I started re-reading Twilight and we both got a little bit of color. That night was a "Formal" night, everyone was all dressed up, this is us at dinner that night.

Monday we made our first stop: Cozumel, Mexico. We had a shore excursion planned here. We got to drive these little buggie cars across the island to a place called Punta Sur, there we saw this pretty light house and a little Mexican ruin, and when I say little I mean very little. We also saw alligators in a sort of swampy area and then went snorkeling! It was a lot of fun. While snorkeling we saw all sorts of fish and coral, a sea turtle, the biggest star fish I have ever seen, and even a big sting ray. The water there is so beautiful, all sorts of different shades of blue and so clear! When we finished snorkeling we had a delicious Mexican lunch and I got a tattoo! Fake, of course. It means energy.

More to come!