Our Caribbean Vacation - Part One...

Yes, you read right... part one. There's just too much to share and too many pictures to cram all into one post, so you get the joy and excitement of seeing our cruise over multiple posts! ;) First off I want to say that I wish I would have taken more pictures, but we were having way too much fun (or way too tired) during some parts of our trip to bust out the camera all the time... I guess you'll have to use your imagination to fill in the blanks and create what the cruise ship looked like, because we stupidly did not take one picture while we were on board of the inside of the ship. Dumb... I know! So here's our very first day. We had a red-eye flight out of Long Beach to Ft. Lauderdale (we basically went from Hollywood to Hollywood well that was the name of the airport anyways). Then we all took a bus from the airport to Miami Beach and had a humongous breakfast at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel. It was very strange to be eating that much food that early in the morning... well it was around 6am, but it was 3am our time. After breakfast we wandered onto the beach and watched the sunrise, it was breath taking and of course cameras do it absolutely no justice. Ben fell asleep on the beach and then we headed back to the hotel. We had around 5 hours to kill before we could board our ship and almost everyone was fast asleep during that time. It was a really funny site to behold, the hotel is super nice and extremely fancy (you have your own personal towel boy when you're by the pool) and to see it littered with more than a hundred of us completely passed out on their deck chairs was pretty hilarious. All of us wearing jeans and sweaters, with our socks on and big bags beside us all around the pool. It was quite entertaining to watch the hotel guests come out ready to play and see all of us sprawled about and drooling. After what seemed like forever (because I couldn't sleep) we got back on the buses and went to the pier. Once on board the ship we walked around for awhile, to get acquainted with the place, ate some lunch and then just hung out for the rest of the night. Ben was absolutely thrilled with the safety briefing, being stuck outside in the sun with a million other people, but he eventually got over being grumpy. It was a really long day of waiting around. We of course had dinner later and then crashed. I think that's all we did on board the ship was eat and sleep! ;)

Ben in awe of the sunrise

He could have stayed there forever I think

Sean, one of the animators that Ben works with, found a jellyfish that was still alive

Beautiful sunrise - stinky camera!

The two of us being cheesy on the beach

Chris and Ruth completely passed out on the deck chairs in the sunshine!

On the ship ready to set sail... we still haven't left the pier yet!

Trip to the Farm...

Underwood Family Farms is finally open again after being closed for the winter, so the weekend right before our cruise we packed up the family in the car and spent the whole day picking all sorts of fresh fruit and veggies, looking at animals, enjoying the beautiful sunny day while wandering around the farm.

Abby was funny... she wanted to eat the carrots instead of feed them to the animals!

This is how Abbers rode for most of the day. She was thrilled to see all the different animals and got super excited when we visited the miniature donkey.

Lizzie picking me some awesome avocados. I want a bush like that in my backyard... whenever I finally have a backyard! ;)

Ben showing Lizzie how to pick mandarin oranges right off the tree

Ben was in heaven... he went a little crazy with the mandarins!

The vegetable garden

Digging for carrots

And picking lots and lots of strawberries!

L - I - Z - Z - I - E...

For about a month now Lizzie's been really interested in learning how to spell and what letters make up certain names / words, so we jumped on the opportunity (I should say Heidi did) to have her start practicing. Auntie Heidi bought a whiteboard and a book from her work, so she can go at it. She done amazingly well... to the point where she knows how to spell her name, my name and Ben's name. She still does some of the letters backwards, like her "z"s and "s"s, but I guess that's normal when you're first starting out. As you can see from the pictures below she's super proud of herself and so are we... I didn't think it was something we did until kindergarten. I guess my little one's a genius! :) Hahaha don't we all think that about our own kids!