Emma Doing Dishes

Had a taste of paradise, now I want more!

Josh and I just got home from a fabulous, wonderful, amazing, relaxing, much needed vacation to the Eastern Caribbean ( St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, and Grand Turk). We were invited along on a “birthday party” cruise for our dear friend Tiffany Booth. COOLEST BIRTHDAY PARTY EVER! We got to celebrate it on a week long cruise! (We are forever indebted to you, Rob and Tiff for such an awesome trip!)

Well, I’ll sum up our trip in pictures….s

St. Thomas: (our first port of call since we missed Half Moon Cay, Bahamas due to wind and choppy seas) It poured down rain most of the time…got about 20 minutes of sun on Magen’s Bay Beach. We would like to go back and visit again!

Puerto Rico: It started out sunny this day, as we walked around Fort San Felipe del Morro in Old San Juan. It was built in the 1500’s by the Spanish (If I remember our intro video correctly). We were getting pretty hot in the sun and decided to head to a beach. Got changed into our suits and started the walk when it started raining! We persevered and swam in the ocean in the pouring down rain, again!

We were determined to get in our Caribbean Sea time. Then we gave up swimming to go eat an authentic Puerto Rican lunch of Mufongo (yucca mashed and fried into a bowl shape filled with meat). It stopped raining when we left the beach. We finished up the day with souvenir shopping. Our port time always went by too quickly!

The time on the boat was spent mostly eating. I tried to take a picture of most of our dinner dishes. We tried a few appetizers and entrees every night, such gluttons! Desserts were always beautifully presented! We had a midnight Mexican buffet one night, and a chocolate buffet for lunch one day.

We played cards for a few hours every night also. The entertainment was lacking on the boat (as you might have guessed if you know Josh and his desire to play games). We saw some comedy acts,danced, watched movies, and sang some karaoke. It was great to have so much time with my hubby without the stresses of school, work, and kids. And it was so fun to hang out with Rob and Tiff so much. You guys are awesome friends and travel buds! We are rooting for that job in SLC, Rob!

Grand Turk was our favorite port! It was gorgeous! (And the only day without rain) The water was crystal clear and warm. We took a catamaran snorkeling tour. Yeah they took us to a popular spot called the Library. It was 20-40 ft deep and then had a drop off edge where the ocean floor went down to 7000 ft.!!!!! Most of you know about my extreme (maybe irrational) fear of sharks and deep water (because that’s where sharks live). Well I had no choice really. I had to do some deep breathing through my snorkel most of the time and was constantly on the lookout for the mortal enemy. Josh held my hand for the majority of the 30 minutes we were in the water. He would ask permission to let go so he could dive down and get closer to the fish or go check out the drop off. There is absolutely no way I would/could have done this snorkeling trip without his reassurance and the feeling of protection I have when he’s with me. Anywho, we highly recommend Grand Turk. I don’t know how much there is to do except for the beach area and shops right next to the port, since we only had 2 hours to check it out after our tour. This was the hardest day to have to get back onto the boat. It was excruciating to leave such a tropical paradise!

Escargot! One of the many unusual things we tried out.

It rained our last day at sea. Bummer! So Tiff and I had some girl time and went the chocolate buffet, a Thriller dance class, and a mini makeover at the Spa while the boys napped. Later, Rob helped me out in the towel folding class, we were making a swan.

We had a night to spend in Miami until our flight Monday morning back to reality. We walked around South Beach and soaked up some sun. (Good thing we did, as its in the low 50’s and coollllddd in Utah now!!!!)

Sorry for the long post. I loved our vacation and am enjoying reliving it

P.S. The kids had a blast at Grandma’s while we were gone. Matt learned all these cool things he likes to show me and Emma ate a lot of food. (That’s good for her!!!) Its nice to be with them again…except when Emma starts screaming or Matt isn’t cooperating…then I just zone out and think of walking on the white sand beach holding my sweetie’s hand and looking for shells.

Trick Or Treat?

We had an interesting Halloween this year. The good parts: dressing up for library storytime, Josh’s USANA party, Uncle Justin’s Pinnacle Party, and our annual pizza party with our good friends, the Smiths. Matt had a blast running to houses with Brenton and others and saying “Trick or Treat”. Emma, however, just wanted to eat the candy….all of it! She would chomp down on candy and get to it through the wrapper  (most times) before we helped her eat it without the plastic. Matt has had 2 maybe 3 pieces total. He doesn’t have a sweet tooth.

So Matt picked our family costume idea this year (back in August) after his dad shared his favorite childhood book by Dr. Seuss. We were the Sneetches! Well, the kids and I were star bellied sneetches and Josh was Mr. McMonkey McBean (the guy who’s machine removes or replaces the stars on their bellies), also chosen by Matt. We got quite an array of puzzled stares by people, so here’s what our costume was based on…..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sneetches_and_Other_Stories

We had fun with pumpkins. Grandma and Grandpa came over to enjoy carving and the kiddos. It was a fun night!

Josh whipped out 2 awesome carvings, a spider and a witch, with his dremel tool. I think he’ll be using it in the future for sure! Matt had a blast carving the jack-o-lantern face with grandma. I spent too long on Matt’s pumpkin wish…Finn McMissile from Cars 2. But it was all worth the roasted pumpkin seeds!

The bad part to Halloween this year was that our shed got burglarized on Halloween night! Someone (probably a group) decided to take all of Josh’s power tools. It was a pretty new and nice collection due to his woodworking hobby. We aren’t really that angry over it, mostly we feel super violated that people would come into our fenced backyard with malicious intent. Thinking about it gives me CREEPED OUT GROSSY FEELINGS!!! We were definitely tricked more than treated this year.