December- The Cruise!

About two weeks before our anniversary in December Justin told me that he wanted to take me somewhere for our anniversary weekend. We had grand plans of going to San Francisco, Yosemite, the Redwoods, staying in a cabin of sorts and snuggling up to a fire with hot cocoa at night. Then about a week before we were suppose to leave, Justin sends me our itinerary and I see that he had changed our plans and bought tickets to Orlando instead. I love Orlando and didn't mind the change of plans. I asked what we would be doing there and he told me it was a surprise. 

Now Justin has lots of different levels of surprises. He has surprised me in the past with a trip to Cancun, a new bike, a new computer, and now a trip to Orlando but he has also talked it up and surprised me with a date to see the Harry Potter movie (I really did want to see it though!), packs of starbursts and Sweedish Fish and, my favorite, a surprise trip home from China :) So really I never know what to expect! Isn't it so cute that he like to surprise me even with small and simple things? I love it. 

Anyway, he let me make dinner plans with our friends who live there, the Shilligs, and told me that we were staying in an all-inclusive resort and I just knew for sure that we were going to commit the ultimate parental sin and go to DisneyWorld sans children. 

So we fly into Orlando early in the morning, rent a car and drive to our destination. We were kinda driving for a ways but the view was turning more into ocean views so I just thought we were staying in an all inclusive at the beach. As we were coming up to Port Canaveral I commented to Justin that I had no idea that Orlando even had a port. Yeah, I definitely didn't do my homework. Turns out there are cruise ports all over Florida. He then takes the Port Canaveral exit and I very excitedly said, "You're taking me on a cruise!!!!! No way!!!" and then proceeded to laugh like a little school girl, giddy with excitement! We have never been on a cruise before so this was a first for us! We just did a simple 4 day cruise to Nassau via Carnival Cruises. 

It was SO perfect and just what we needed! 4 days with out cell phones, kiddos, schedules, and work...ahhh...it was so nice. I will admit, it was hard to break away from the kids, especially sweet baby Mason. 

Here we are on the ship looking super awesome after a red eye flight.... :)

Goodbye Orlando!!!

It was pretty chilly in Orlando but it warmed up quite a bit once we got into the Bahamas.

The first night on the ship was so fun. We just did our own thing and explored the ship. I guess the colder weather made the water super choppy and the boat swayed SO bad. Justin and I were cracking up at each other stumbling over everything as we walked the boat. Playing mini golf was hilarious. Skill didn't matter as the boat took the ball wherever it wanted to go. 

It was awesome to do whatever we wanted to do whenever we wanted to do it! If we wanted ice cream at midnight, we ate it. If we wanted to go to the hot tub, we went! It was so great. 

We woke up the next morning to beautiful Bahamian weather. We sat outside on our balcony and read scriptures and talked every morning. 

As we pulled up to Nassau, we saw the Atlantis Resort. We actually went through and explored some of it. It's pretty cool and looks like a place we'd like to take the kiddos someday. 

Pretty sure I have an obsession with pretty blue water...

We hopped off the boat, rented a ridiculously cheap scooter and took off to explore the island! We somehow got off of the typical tourist path and found ourselves in the heart of downtown Nassau and were the only white people around. We stopped at a local grocery store for some water, which we saw a pack of Oreos there for $17- yikes, and then headed over to the Atlantis hotel to check it out.  The beach there was so pretty. 

Unfortunately the water was a little chilly for me to swim in (I like bath water temperature), but everyone else seemed to be enjoying the waves. 

Not our boat, but ours was just like it. 

We decided to hop on the scooter and drive to the west side of the island to enjoy a beautiful Bahamian sunset. Unfortunately, all the rich people on the island must have bought up all the property out there because there was no public beach access! We had to pull up into someone's driveway to get this view. 

Still, it was romantic :)

After the sun went down, we decided to head back to the boat for dinner and the hot tub. Just as we were making the 20 min or so drive back, we realized that the gas was on empty. Like completely empty. We couldn't remember there being a gas station any where close so we hoped and prayed that somehow we could make it back into town. Well, our prayers were answered and somehow we were able to make it to a gas station! We must have went for like 15-20 minutes on fumes!

We've never been so glad to see a gas station before!

The rest of our time on the boat was spent relaxing at the pool, reading, going to the gym and just lounging around. A true vacation. 

For those of you just tuning in, Mason has a dairy allergy and I read online that it takes around 4-6 hours for the dairy to make it into your breastmilk and about a half a day to get rid of it so since I wasn't nursing Mason and was just pumping to keep up my milk supply, I ate whatever the heck I wanted for 3 whole days. 

And ice cream never tasted so good after 7 months of not having ANY sweets with dairy in it (which is like everything)!

The cute waiters in the dining room brought us a Happy Anniversary dessert plate and sang happy Anniversary to us in all kinds of different keys and pitches... it was really sweet and cute! They really liked us because we could speak Spanish and have visited their home country, so they treated us extra good. 

We decided that we could definitely do another cruise again and even though we were excited to see the kids, we were a bit sad to leave our independency back at the cruise ship. I guess that's why we are told to consistently date each other...turns out it's good for a marriage to get away from our everyday responsibilities and just focus on one another :)

Huge thanks to friends and family who watched our kids for us and huge thanks to my sweet, awesome, thoughtful, fun and handsome husband. I love you and happy 7 years!!