Cruisin' the Caribbean

We're finally feeling better over here (well mostly anyway). Poor Rylee, she had a nasty ear infection and was just miserable. All I can say is that I LOVE amoxicillin, after Rylee had two doses of the stuff she was SO much better. Phew! Anyway, like I said before, we had SO much fun on our cruise! It was such a blast and the Caribbean water is so unbelievably beautiful! (I can also only compare it to northern Mexico ocean which is a brownish color-no wonder I was so amazed!) Here's a pic I got from the web to show you how pretty the water is, none of my pictures quite captured its blue color. ***BEWARE, this is an obnoxiously long post-but keep in mind I consider blogging my way of journaling. :) Okay, so the following is a trip recap, so it may get boring and I apologize, feel free to skip through. To start off with, I had to fly Rylee to Tucson to meet up with Garrick's parents, Gary and Delann. I was okay until we were driving to the airport for me to leave without my baby. As soon as we got in the car Rylee was asleep because she was so exhausted from the fun day we had in Tucson visiting my Grandmas and other family members (which was SOOO fun to get to see them and for them to see Rylee). I'm sitting in the back of the car trying not to talk too much to Gary and Delann because I was crying and I didn't want them to know. Well, that attempt flew out the window when we got to the airport and I had to say bye to my sleeping baby who didn't even know Mommy was leaving (which was probably better that way, but I totally felt like a jerk and that I was abandoning her). So yeah, I just started bawling, poor Gary and Delann- they finally figured out what a whack job their daughter-in-law is! Anyway, so I flew back to Albuquerque that night and Garrick and I and my parents flew to Florida the next day. The cruise didn't leave until Sunday so Garrick and I got to hang out with one of my old roommates and friend, Carrie and her husband Kyle. I hadn't seen her since the good 'ol EA days so it was so fun to see her again and meet her husband. Here are me and Carrie on the beach, it's night though so you can't tell... Thanks Carrie and Kyle for driving us around and hanging out with us! :) Okay, so lets skip along to the actual cruise. We got a balcony sweet which was awesome. I had always heard that cruise rooms are like closets, but ours was huge (for a cruise room)! Here's Garrick watching TV in ours and my parents on their balcony right next to us. The ship was amazing too, it's seriously a town that floats. Our first stop was in Nassau, Bahamas and I LOVED it! It is so beautiful and the people are great! We only got to stay there from about 7am to 12:30 so we didn't have a whole lot of time. We hadn't planned ahead on any excursions so when we got there we looked around and found a guide to take us around. He took us all around and showed us Nassau. So we saw the funniest sign that we joked about all the rest of the trip, I so wish I had a picture of it, but since I don't, I'll just tell you what it said (and how it was spelled)-- "Pratect ya tings, use a rubber every time" and then in smaller letters something about protecting yourself from STD's and getting pregant. We had a good laugh! Our first stop cracked us up a bit because we stop at these little store shacks where it's obviously some friends of the tour guide and he tells us it's a "historical site". Okay, so it technically was a historical site after all, there were some old forts nearby, but we just thought it was funny because we knew we were just stopping there to patronize his friends. It ended up being a fun stop though and Garrick and my Uncle John made good friends with "Big Mama". She was hilarious and she got a kick out of them too! We also stopped to see the aquarium at this hotel called the Atlantis (I think...) where the price for a room per night ranges from $200 to $25,000!!! The place was amazing though and the aquarium was beautiful. They had a 13 foot mana ray in there, he was huge! Then on our way back to the ship we asked our tour guide to stop by a beach for us so we could at least say we went there. It was by far the prettiest beach we saw---silky white sand and beautiful blue water. We only stayed for like 15 minutes or so because we had to get back to the ship, but that was plenty long for us, it was a fairly cold and windy day in Nassau when we were there. Here are Garrick and I on the beach and then-wham!- a big (well kinda big) wave came up and got us soaked from the waist down. :) And here is a pic of me and mom frolicking on the beach-my Aunt Jan captured my mom in mid-leap, way to go Jan! And then here is a pic of John and Jan on the beach. So yeah, we head back to the ship and and start cruisin' again. That afternoon and the next day we were supposed to be heading to the Cayman Islands. Well, about Tues afternoon we notice that the ship has turned around and then eventually they make an announcement that they were having to rendezvous with a helicopter because there was a medical emergency and some guy had to get help ASAP. Turned out the poor guy had a heart attack and was in a pretty bad way. Anyway, we kept waiting to meet up with the chopper and it didn't come and didn't come and all this time we are heading the wrong way! Well, eventually the chopper comes and lifts the guy away and then they make the "devastating" announcement that due to the loss of time, we weren't going to be able to make port in Cayman. I know...I felt so picked on and that nothing worse could happen to anybody else. That is, until I remembered that there was a couple on board who was supposed to get married in the Cayman Islands and they had 39 people with them on board and even more that were meeting up with them in the Cayman Islands and were already there. Yeah, my own pity party was short lived. It's okay though, everything turned out great. The sick guy was doing "great" they announced and the couple ended up getting married in Jamaica. Anyways, the days on the ship were fun too. We just relaxed by the pools, swam, played around, shopped, went to shows at night, and of course, ate like CRAZY. Ohhh, so one of the nights we got to go eat at Harry's- which is this posh restaurant on board that you pay like $30 extra each person. We didn't have to pay that though because this lady, Janice, who is my Dad's company's Yellow Page rep took us all there---SWEET! It was so fun though, it was like a six-course meal of the most yummy food and everything was presented so beautifully and all the servers had awesome accents! Of course though, the best part was this amazing dessert that was actually 3 different small portions of different chocolate desserts and let me just tell you, they were all to DIE FOR!!! Those are pics of us dining- I love both John and Jan's faces in the pic. Yes...John got quite tipsy from his coke. Haha. The other pic is my mom, Kati and Glenn (my parent's business partners) and Janice. But anyway, like I said, playing on the ship was a lot of fun. Here's a pic of Garrick, Dad and John going down the water slide. They were having way too much fun! Look at those white boys! Haha :) And then the others are pics of us playing on the ship. And oh yeah, could this be more pathetic? Here's a pic of everybody lined up around the decks of the ship staring at the Cayman Islands longingly. We ended up having to stop there to let off like 4 other people that were sick. So talk about twisting the dagger, we were at Cayman Islands, but couldn't go there. *tear* Enough whining about Cayman though, we got to go to Ochos Rios, Jamaica the next day and it was SO MUCH FUN! We totally packed the day to make up for Cayman. We climbed Dunns River Falls, went tubing down the river and then went snorkeling out on the reefs. Busy! I'm so sad though because since all those activities were very wet, I couldn't take my camera. So all we have is the pictures we had to buy from the tour people. Good enough though, right? Climbing the falls was really fun, the guides were hilarious because they just kept saying "No wet, no fun!" And it is no exaggeration that the people in Jamaica say "Ya man" and "No problem" every other sentence, I found myself using those phrases alot too! ;) Tubing down the river was also alot of fun. The funny thing was though that with both of those activities, the tour guides totally babied me because I'm prego. Going up the falls they made everybody hold hands like a kindergarten line and the guide would always find me and grab my hand so that I was the first and she could keep an eye on me. Honestly though, I did way better than alot of the other people. It really wasn't hard, but everybody was shocked that I climbed it. Haha! And then when we went tubing our tour guide, Utone, kept a hold of my tube the whole way. It worked out kinda nice though because everybody else had to paddle their way around certain areas and I just got to sit back and relax while Utone did all the work. I kept trying and he would tell me "Relax baby's mama, I got it." The pic I have of us tubing is seriously like one of the very few times that he wasn't holding my tube. Good times anyway though. Unfortunately, I don't have any pics of us snorkeling. It was really fun though and there were the most beautiful fish out there, and a ton of them too! Seriously though, they were some of the prettiest fish I've seen! Anyway, here's some more pics of us around Jamaica, it's so beautiful there! Well the last night on board was the ChemDry awards ceremony. (ChemDry is the franchise my parents own and it was their annual convention on the ship, that's why we chose to go at this time-cuz my parents and my uncle and aunt were going anyway-plus we got a good deal signing up with the convention). So anyway, at the awards ceremony my dad was awarded the "American Dream" award! The award is basically just honoring him for "living the American Dream"--starting up his business with my mom from nothing when they were newlyweds and only 20 years old and turning it into a very successful business where they have truly been able to live the American Dream, and all the while never sacrificing time with his family. It was an honor to be there and see him awarded and honored like that! Congrats Dad, I'm so proud of you! Well we got back to Florida Saturday morning but our flight wasn't till late afternoon so we went on an excursion to the Everglades. It turned out to be a blast too! We went on an airboat through the everglades at times going 40mph sideways! We got to see tons of wildlife and saw a lot of gators too, they would come up right next to the boat! Eek! There was this huge one that we saw that the guide said was probably about 13 feet long! Funny thing was though, is apparently they are very docile, the guide was saying that they will only attack when provoked, he demonstrated this by hanging off the side of the boat shaking his booty only feet from the mouth of an alligator! I wish I had a picture! Here's some pics I do have from on the everglades tour though. Interesting fact, did you know that the Everglades were once thought of as a swamp, but turns out it's actually the world's slowest moving river- moving only 3-4 inches an hour! Hmmm. Anyway, we eventually went to the airport, waited for hours and FINALLY got home to my baby girl!!!! She had such a blast with her Grandparents and they claim that she was really good for them too. Thank you so much Gary and Delann for taking such good care of our little girl! So when we got home I just wanted to give Rylee a big hug and hold her, but she didn't want anything to do with me, all she wanted was her Daddy! She wouldn't let him go! She just kept hugging and kissing him and patting his back. It was pretty cute, but I'm not gonna lie...I was jealous! Haha! So all in all, we had a great trip and have some really great memories, but it's also so nice to be home! There's definitely no place like home! :)