Twenty Years!

Two whole decades!  That's how long we've been married.  I love us.  I love that we want to keep moving forward, improving ourselves, and our marriage.  I love that we can laugh, and have a great time together.  I love that we're best friends.  I love our talks, our time together, all of it.  We were lucky enough to wrangle my parents into taking the kids for a week while we went on a cruise to celebrate.  We owe them forever I'm sure!  

After spending a day in Utah (roller skating with the kids, visiting with my sisters), we flew out to Fort Lauderdale on the red eye.  I just don't sleep well on flights, and he hadn't had much either, but somehow we rented our car and made the short drive over to Miami.  After a quick 20 minute nap in the car so I could function, we parked, grabbed some breakfast and walked all over balmy South Beach  We stopped in at the Marshall's, soaked in the AC, bought Corey a new swimsuit, took a trolley, boarded our ship the MSC Seaside, an Italian cruise line) and saw a show despite our exhaustion!

We slept late our first day at sea, and enjoyed the amazing view from our deck. Our room was awesome, with a very large deck/patio looking out onto the ocean with a table, chairs and a couple of loungers. Loved it!  We hit the gym, lounged and read books on the deck and enjoyed the food and another show.  The shows on this ship, every one of them, were amazing.  It was like seeing mini cirque-esque shows every night.  Really so much better than expected.  

The day we toured San Juan, we worked out, and had room service come by with the BEST pain au chocolate (this ship also did pastries right, yum).  We hit all the waterslides, swam and then spent the evening in Old San Juan.  Our first stop was the Castle San Cristibal, then a cathedral, El Morro.  We walked through the beautiful quaint streets, saw several historic squares with monument, and walked over a million blue bricks that covered the streets.  We saw a view of the ocean and the sunset at El Morro.  The worst part was when I accidentally deleted ALL the pictures on the camera I brought.  Big oops, and so there are no photos, just memories.  One weird thing...there were cats everywhere!  I loved seeing the iguanas, and one in particular just hangs out at the Fort and didn't mind people at all.  We also tried a coconut milk soda that we liked, but couldn't find anywhere else.  Puerto Rico was charmingly beautiful with it's clorful houses, old fort, beautiful views and the interesting mix of American and Spanish influence.  That night we did get to talk to our boys for a bit, and we've decided they're having way too much fun without us!

The next stop was St. Thomas.  We could see the port from our cabin as we arrived that morning.  It was a beautiful, lush, green hillsede studded with colonial style houses with tile roofs.  We took a taxi out to Magen's Bay and spent a beautiful day lying on the beach and swimming in the crystal clear water there.  The morning was fairly peaceful but it became much busier as the day went on.  We didn't end up snorkling, because there just weren't colorful fish, but there were lots of tiny schools of fish swimming around, and some fun top hat shells on the beach.  The drive back to the city had spectacular views.  We went to a small local grocery store (something we love to do) to buy some fun new snacks or foods to try with the boys when we got home.  The island is beautiful, although still fairly roughed up from Hurrican Irma in 2017.  The beach had stumps of former palm trees still sitting in piles, not yet cleared from the old beack park area and overall things seemed somewhat rough around the edges still.  We had a nice lunch with crab legs on the ship while enjoying the views of the bay.  That night we saw another fantastic show.

At St. Maarten, we scheduled a city tour excursion to see both the Dutch and French sides.  We were excited to see it all.  The first stop was Marigot, a city on the French side.  We grabbed a chocolat eclair and a pain au chocolate from a little French bakery (with my very scary middle school French, haha).  The town itself is on a beautiful stretch of wather but is still so depressed and obviously recovering from the hurricane.  During our tour around the island, we saw bats in the bay still overturned or tossed on their sides.  One was sunken completely, with only it's mast still visible.  Crazy.  There were some beautuful homes in the hills, but the ones in town were very shabby with roofs and walls missin, or sets of stairs that go to nowhere.  We did do a little shopping on both sides of the island, drove thru the fishing village of Cole Bay, and saw the airport.  The highlight of the day was Maho Beach which has a runway that is famously close to the ocean, and the tiny beach that people wait on to feel the rush of having an airplane land right over the top of you.  While we were there, at least 7 planes landed, and it really is crazy!  The planes were big, but not the gigantic commercial planes, and I can only imagine what kind of windblasting you'd get from one of those. It was a unique experience!  The beach at Maho was beautiful too.  We loved our tour and seeing the island.  We worked out, saw another awesome show, had a nice dinner then hit the late night White Party onthe back deck.  That was an afterthought really, but we had a fantastic time dancing on the 
deck and covered pool.  

After a crazy night of dancing we slept in.  Yay for us!  After trying to find a great spot to read on the decks, we remembered we had a  nice quiet deck of our very own and went back there instead. We saw a mini opera show that night and had a dress up dinner afterwards (Corey had prime rib and I tried pheasant, yum...and Baked Alaska for dessert). Overall it was a fun day.

The Bahamas was our next awesome stop.  We had decided to hit a few attractions on our own to get as much in as possible, and we walked ALL over the place.  We brought snorkeling gear, but wouldn't you know it, it was a very rainy day!  We'd also brought our rain jackets along, so the crazy rain was fine.  We headed to Fort Charlotte instead of Junkanoo, and had the place almost to ourselves.  The fort was a great place to tour - built in the late 1700's with amazing views to boot.  After we left, it started absolutely pouring rain, I mean torrential downpour.  We found a beautiful old church called Christ Church Cathedral, which was a nice escape from the rain, and then headed over to Fort Fincastle, and walked up the Queen's Staircase (SO cool).  After seeing so much, we headed down to the Straw Market and bought a few souvenirs for the kids, while fending off some rude sales people.  Sheesh!  We were too tired to wait for our late dinner time, so hit the buffet instead and finished if off with some gelato and chocolates.  

And that was it!  Our trip was relaxing, busy, fun, exciting, tasty, and just lovely.  I loved Corey, the balmy air, the beach, the pain au chocolate, our deck, the evening shows, the ship's chopped fruit mix and found a new favorite...burchermuesli, delish.  So much fun and will love the memories.  And a huge and heartfelt shout out to my parents who took such good care of and entertained my kids so well, that I believe they were a little disappointed when we came back, ha! After a week of Lagoon, parks, milkshakes, burgers, baseball games, cousin time, participating in a triathalon,...did I miss anything, oh and each coming home with a scrapbook full of pics from their time, what did we expect?!

We actually ended up being persuaded to let Asher stay an extra week and he flew home alone.  We had to get home for Beckett's All-Star baseball games, and Asher was able to go to the family reunion and enjoy some fun family time.