Cruise Part Dos!

I would have liked to make our trip one big blog, but I can only upload pictures from work, so I have some time constraints. I'm back here now, so lets see how much I can get done!

Tuesday was another day at sea, so not much going on this day... we did start going to the restaurant at night, it was very fancy. I taught Chris the correct way to eat a roll and how to correctly finish a bowl of soup. He didn't take to it well though. :)

On Wednesday we arrived at The Grand Cayman Islands!

We didn't have any shore excursions set up here so after walking around for a little bit we took a cab to 7 Mile Beach and just hung out there for the day! This is Chris at Senor Frog's, which is apparently a popular bar, they had one in Cozumel too, delicious pina coladas! That is me with a poster of Sawyer from Lost! and of couse, the beach!

Thursday we made it to Jamaica! This was our favorite stop! We had a shore excursion here and did the coolest thing! Jamaica has a world famous water fall, called the Dunns River Falls. We climbed up it! It was so neat! The water was pretty cold, but not enough to keep us away; and the current was so strong! The hike was perfect, it was just difficult enough that you have to pay attention to what you're doing to be safe. We loved it! Here are pictures of the falls and the surrounding area...

Jamaica was our last stop, so at this point we headed back to Miami. On Friday something VERY interesting happened. Our cruise ship picked up a boat with 50 or so refugees from Haiti! They were all very dehydrated and sick. Apparently some people had already died of dehydration and they had thrown the bodies overboard and so sharks were circling their boat! It was crazy. So Friday night we met up with the Coast Guard right off the coast of Cuba and they took them away. I hope they are alright! Poor people...tryin to escape Haiti... :S

Another note worthy thing happened Friday night. Well, Friday morning we tried playing Bingo for the first time and LOVED it! So Friday night was the last Bingo of the entire trip. You had to get an entire blackout and the prize was $1000. It was obviously taking a while since you had to get a blackout...I was doing OK with my cards, but Chris was only short ONE space when someone called BINGO.

We were SO upset, it was devastating. I'm a drama queen I know, but we were SO close. An extra $1000 bucks would help us so much! Oh well, that's what we get for gambling i guess. :)

We made it back to Miami and headed to the airport. We had a layover in St. Louis where once I had Internet and cell phone access discovered that one of my best friends from High School, Staci Ardis, is engaged! So exciting!

We arrived in SLC where my Grandparents brought us our car. We had dinner with them and then headed on home. At midnight we made it to Idaho Falls and went grocery shopping (why would anyone ever go grocery shopping at midnight is beyond me, but we did it, gumpy'n all) and then made it home by one!
All and all it was a great trip! We would love to go on another cruise, but think it would be even more fun with family and friends along too! So everyone start saving!

Here are a few more fun pictures!

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!