Summer Vacation...

In June we went up to visit my family in Cheney, WA. It's been way too long since we've spent any time with my family and it was really great to hangout with my mom and dad, play on the water, and just enjoy the awesome scenery ... even my brother and his girlfriend, Melissa, and my grandma came over to the lake house to play! We arrived on Thursday evening and the girls settled right in and throughly enjoyed hearing the frogs and crickets sing them to sleep. The next day, which happen to be the day Kyle and Melissa arrived and my mom's last day of school, was kinda cloudy and a little cold, but that did't stop us from enjoying the water. The rest of our days were beautiful, sunny, warm, and even more fantastic with the arrival of my grandma. Thanks mom and dad (and grandma) for letting us take over your house for a good chunk of the week, we loved every minute of it! The girls had a lot of fun throwing rocks in the lagoon, chasing your kitties, and being out on the water... and both are still taking about the jet ski rides. : )

Abby playing on the shore. That's my parents' house directly behind her.

Lizzie completely taking over grandma's house!

The boys taking out the boat for a quick little ride

Abby and Ben ready to ride... she wasn't quite sure what to think of it at first and she'd rather be riding this instead...

Out on the canoe... she could have stayed out here forever!

Abby... are you driving the boat?!

This was by far Lizzie's most favorite thing ever. From the dock you could hear her yelling at Ben... go faster, daddy, faster!

my grandma and Abby

enjoying the deck on a lazy, late afternoon

Ben thinking it was way warmer than it really was

I still can't believe I didn't go fishing... don't know how that happened, but despite the lack slimy worms and hooks I still enjoyed every minute of it... minus Ben trying to pack the canoe with two very wiggly, cranky, little girls before we had a chance to take it out without them, which in turn made me cranky and freak out for no good reason. : ) Thanks again mom, dad, and grandma... hopefully we'll see you sooner than every 2 years, cause that just stinks!

Camping...

A couple weeks ago Ben finally had a much needed vacation (feels like we haven't seen much of him lately with his crazy work schedule) so we went camping! We chose a place by the beach again, of course, and spent 4 whole days enjoying the beauty and our family. The campground was a little up past Santa Barbara called El Capitan. Such a great place with so much to do and explore. Half woods, half ocean beach and with a bike trail as an added bonus. The girls did great. I should say Abby did great, wasn't too worried about Lizzie, she's been camping before, but it was Abby's very first time and my littlest was more than fine... filthy dirty the whole time, but thoroughly enjoyed herself. I wish we could go camping more, it's just so nice to unplug and get away from it all. To walk barefoot on the beach, explore the vastness of the woods, to see the stars in all their glory and remember how black the darkness of night really is.

Sunset on the first night we were there, just steps from our campsite

Our site, complete with little play tent for the girls

The ocean view from our spot

Nap time!

Exploring the far shore. Love the danger sign in the background!

A walk through the woods. They had some huge crazy trees there.

The beach at El Capitan

Finding critters in the tide pools. Abby loved poking the sea anemones.

Getting ready for our 2 mile bike ride up to Refugio State Beach.

Refugio was beautiful... lined with palm trees and shaded in fog. I know it looks super cold, but it was actually very warm.

Ah, so ready to do it all over again!

Our Caribbean Vacation - Part Three...

So this is the last time you'll have to hear me talk about our fabulous (and almost completely paid for by Ben's work) cruise... I promise! :) Our final day, and our most favorite one, was spent on the island Nassau. It was beautiful and sunny plus it was a place with some history, totally opposite of the day before, but it was also a Sunday. And being Sunday were almost everyone on the island goes to church pretty much everything was closed down for the day; very cool but a slight bummer. We started out the morning taking a boat ride through the harbor, past all the huge ocean front mansions owed by famous people like Oprah and Micheal Jordon (who happen to live right next to each other) and out into the ocean to another smaller island to go snorkeling... since Ben and I didn't do it the day before. That was a lot of fun. The water was so clear you could literally look over the side of the boat and see the bottom. At first there was not a whole lot of fish but once everyone stopped jumping off the boat it was pretty insane. We saw tons of fish and huge schools of fish went right underneath Ben and I, if you would have stuck you arm down you could have easily touch them. I even saw a stingray. We had a good hour to play around in the water and then it was back on the boat and back to the harbor. Ben was constantly getting whistled at for going out of bounds while he was out there and he was the very last one to get back on the boat too. I went back a little before him since I started to get a little sea sick. The waves were pretty rough and if you weren't paying close enough attention you would get totally smashed by a crashing one... there's truly nothing like floating in the middle of the ocean, just completely letting it have total control over you. Incredibly powerful and amazing things those oceans are.

Back on dry land Ben rented a moped (which I stupidly did not take one single picture of). It was this cute little red one that we both could ride on, so Ben drove and I held on for dear life. He almost killed twice, no seriously he did. In Nassau they drive on the other side of the road like in Europe, it was totally screwing Ben up the whole time, plus there are a million and one one-way streets everywhere. I can't tell you how many times we went around this one block over and over because Ben couldn't figure out where to go! It was a total blast having the freedom to go wherever we wanted even though it was slightly insane. We had asked the guy we rented it from where we should go or what we should see and he mapped out a few spots for us, all of the places he suggested where fantastic. So we picked up the moped drove one little block and went and had some coffee at Starbucks, yes there was a Starbucks there... needless to say Ben was more than thrilled! While we drank our coffee and enjoyed the view of the harbor we planned out how we wanted to spend our extremely limited amount of time, we had around 4 hours left before we had to be back on the cruise ship. We both really wanted to see some pirate stuff, since Nassau is considered the pirate capital of the Caribbean, so the first stop was the pirate museum, which unfortunately was closed being Sunday and all. So we continued our ride along the beach to Fort Charlotte, which was also closed, so we didn't get to go inside and see some of the interesting collections they have in there, but we did get to walk around and climb up on top of the fort. It had the most beautiful view. Then it was time for lunch. The moped guy highly recommend this little place called the Seafood Haven on Arawak Cay. It was pretty much this little whole in the wall place where we felt like the only non-local people there. I couldn't understand anything on the menu and Ben had left, for what seamed like forever, to use the restroom. We actually started to walk out of the place when we could not find something other than shrimp on the menu. As we were walking out Ben said something about wanting fish and chips and the waiter said we have fish and chips. Do you want the whole fish or just part of the fish?! Needless to say they all got a good laugh out of us that afternoon, but it was some of the best fried fish I've ever had.

After lunch we continued cruising down the coastline and eventually pulled down this little street to see if we could somehow get onto beach. We ended up right on the beach where Sandals has their private resort and walked for awhile. There where a couple of older, really cool looking mansions that lined the beach and we just sat basically in their front yard enjoy the awesome sand and view. Then sadly it was time to drive back downtown and board the ship to return to Miami and then fly back home to LA. It was a wonderful, little vacation, not to mention our very first without the girls. And it would have never happened if it were not for Aunt Heidi. Thanks again for watching the little ones! Somehow I don't think a single beach towel was enough of a payment for that whole weekend! ;)

Cruising though the harbor on our way to go snorkeling

Ben all geared up and ready to go

On top of Fort Charollte

Fort Charlotte, would have been so cool to wander around inside.

On Cable Beach

Our Caribbean Vacation - Part Two...

Day two - I awoke at 7am to the captain's voice over the loud speaker letting all of us, who were so soundly asleep, know that we have arrived at our first destination, port of call, whatever you want to call it. Ben was barely conscious at that time of day and really had no clue what was going on as I was trying to wake him, with enough time to get ready to meet our friends for breakfast at 8:30am. I really don't remember how or why we all agreed on that time, but needless to say not one of us made it to breakfast together that morning. We're all the same... night dwelling, morning dislikers, who run on our own time, which is always slightly a little off from everyone else's, so I really don't know how 8:30am was even an option. :) Once I was up I unfortunately couldn't go back to sleep. I actually started to get really seasick. I was fine while the ship was moving forward and actually traveling, but once it was anchored I started to have issues. The motion of the ship changed from side to side (which was fine) to up and down, which my head didn't like at all. After dragging Ben out of bed and upstairs for some breakfast and one little cup of coffee we finally were able to get off the ship. It took a little while since we were just parked in the middle of the ocean, you had to ride a little boat from the cruise ship to their private island because the water was too shallow. But once we where there it was a lot of fun... after Ben stopped being grumpy that is!

Yes, Ben was really, really grumpy for most of the morning. He had only one little, tiny cup of coffee and after seeing the island he was even grumpier. Coco Cay, the private island, is really hard to describe... it had a strange theme park, summer camp vibe to it, since everything there was put there by the cruise company. They charged you for everything and you still had to follow kind of a schedule as to when you could eat, when you had to be back and according to Ben when you could have any fun. Basically you where placed in this beautiful tropical setting and then the cruise line totally cheapened it... if that makes any sense at all. Ben was thoroughly convinced that he was walking around in Monkey Island looking for a Starbuckaneer's. :) (Sorry if you haven't played the game then it makes absolutely no sense. Basically in the game you're this pirate who's trying to stop this Australian guy from making the Caribbean into a giant tourist trap and in it there are knock offs of Starbucks, Planet Hollywood etc... all over the place.)

So the island ended up being totally different than either of us had expected, poor Ben was going from place to place trying to find a cup of coffee and around his third try the guy at the bar said that there was absolutely no coffee on the whole entire island. That really made his day, did I mention that it had rained that morning and it was now cloudy and slightly cold?! I had to drag him around just so we could see more of the place and while doing so we actually ran into everyone else. We had planned to go snorkeling, and were all signed up and ready to get our gear, but then everybody else bailed at the last minute and even though Ben still wanted to go, he gave in and returned his stuff too. We should have just gone without them... I wonder how many times that actually happens to Ben at work? :) So Ben sat with his big grumpy face on the beach while everyone else was playing in the sand enjoying themselves.

The day did get better though and the sun did finally come out, plus Ben was able to use Angelina's snorkel gear for a little bit, which put him in a much better mood. After that we ate some lunch where we ran into Ruth and Chris, who had just gotten there because they had slept in... I'm sure Ben wishes he would have done that! And then after lunch we went around exploring the island, which actually turned out to be pretty cool place after all.

On the little boat to the little private island. The only picture of our cruise ship too.

It had just stopped raining and was super windy, hence all the hair in my face!

The beach where everyone else got to go snorkeling, but poor Ben.

Mr. Grumpy Face sitting on the beach all by himself

Starting to finally have some fun hanging out with Steve and Sean from work.

Making a sand couch

This is on the other side of the island away from all of the cruise stuff

Walking along the nature trail trying to find lizards

One end of the trail, I wish we would have found this area at the beginning of our day, it finally felt like a tropical island!

Ben wanted to stay here for the rest of the day... can you blame him?

Walking back to the other side of the island since it was time to get back on the ship... now that it was finally super sunny and warm and Ben was in a better mood.