Southern Caribbean Cruise 2014 Day 6: St. Lucia

Day six. We were exhausted but still ready for some more adventure.

On Tuesday I woke up not feeling so great. I was trying to fight it off but ultimately knew antibiotics were the only thing that would take care of it. I really did not want to make a trip down to the infirmary to see the doctor because I know I would have to pay an arm and a leg. We went to breakfast and I was miserable. We still had 4 full days left of the trip and I was not going to be miserable for the rest of the trip. We went down to the infirmary and let me tell you. That was my fastest doctor's appointment ever! Seen by the nurse, triage done, labs processed, seen by the doctor, prescriptions written and in my hand all within 20 minutes! Yes, we paid a lot of money, but luckily my insurance reimbursed us for most of it. I took the first dose of meds right away and quickly felt better.

Before this cruise I had done research on St. Lucia and was so excited! It seemed like a beautiful island with so many fun things to do. However, the weather that day was cloudy and gross, we were tired, and I was still not feeling the best so we decided to scratch all plans and just walk around for a bit. We had originally reserved a car but after our crazy and nerve wracking driving experience in Barbados, we decided to just cancel all cars for the rest of the week.

We walked over to the beach which was by an airport. We saw a few small planes take off and land as we made our way. We were followed and approached by a homeless man which made me super uncomfortable, but we made it safe to and from the beach. It was nice, but I'm sure there were nicer places on the island. 

We returned the ship, played some more mini golf and cards, and once again, watched as we left St. Lucia. We went to our second Elegant Night dinner, an evening show, and enjoyed a relaxing evening.

For those who didn't know, Andrew is a huge Oregon Ducks fan. They were planning a big game this night and he was hoping the sports bar on the ship would have it up on the TVs. We asked the bartender and he said he had it on his schedule. However, at game time, we discovered that the ship did not get the channel after all. So Andrew missed the game and boy was he bummed. It turns out the Ducks lost that night. Maybe they would have won if their biggest fan had actually gotten to watch the game ;)

Overall, we enjoyed our laid back and relaxing day in St. Lucia. I'm not sure if we will ever come back to St. Lucia, but it's nice to say we have been there. 

Southern Caribbean Cruise 2014 Day 5: Barbados

Wednesday: Barbados. Barbados was definitely an adventure that left us with so many memories.

Before we had left for the cruise, we had booked a car for three of our stops. One of those stops was in Barbados. We were a little nervous coming in to this because in Barbados, the driver sits on the right side of the car and drives on the left side of the road. Andrew said that he would be fine with driving so we picked up our car and headed on our way! 

We drove to the east side of the island, looking for a beach called "Bathsheba". This was one of the places I had seen online that travel critics and other tourists said was a must see. We just had one tiny little cartoon-like map to follow. The writing was small and it was very difficult to follow. The roads were narrow and we were driving on dirt, gravel, and paved roads. We saw lots of farm land, a variety of neighborhoods, and we finally made it to Bathseba! It was beautiful. It is part of the Atlantic Ocean. Definitely not a good swimming spot but the views were beautiful. 

After Bathsheba we decided to head to the beach. On our drive over we had seen a couple of beaches that looked nice. We made our way over and enjoyed and afternoon of warm water, soft sand, and hot sun.

When it was time to go back to the ship I pulled out the map to try to navigate us back. At one point we took a wrong turn and had to turn around. We found the perfect spot...the Barbados LDS church building! We had wanted to try to find the building any ways but it was fun to just stumble upon it! 

We made it back to the ship in time to watch us pull away. This was another favorites activity of ours. We love standing in the front if the ship and watching it pull away from the dock and watch the beautiful islands we had just spent the day at disappear behind us. 

That evening we played mini golf some more (I'm pretty sure I lost), played some cards, watched a movie, went to dinner, and did some laundry. Barbados was a great stop!

Southern Caribbean Cruise 2014 Day 4: Fun Day at Sea

Druing every cruise there is at least one "Fun Day at Sea". This is a day where no stops are made and it is simply a full day of sailing and enjoying all the fun that the ship has to offer. We were looking forward to this day and definitely made the most of our time.

We had scheduled a couple of spa appointments for us when we first arrived on board. I had a massage for myself (of course!) and Andrew had a nice shave with a scalp, arm, and hand massage. In my opinion, the services were very over priced and the massage wasn't the best that I had had, but we still enjoyed ourselves very much. After our bit of pampering, we went back to our room and took a nice long nap. We woke just in time to catch the tail end of the breakfast buffet. After breakfast, we went out onto the main deck to watch some ice carving. They always carve the same figure, an Indian Chief head, but it is always impressive. We stood out there watching him do this for about 30 minutes and it was hot and muggy! After the ice carving, we went back to our room for yet another nap. I think we were still trying to catch up from our lack of sleep while travelling. After this nap, we went up to the adults only deck called "Serenity". We laid out, read, and watched the beautiful ocean go by.

Later in the afternoon, we headed back to our cabin to do some laundry, ironing, and get ready for our first elegant night. 

We played our second round of mini golf in which Andrew won. It was pretty windy so I'm blaming my loss that night on the wind. 

We headed to a comedy show before dinner. They always have "family friendly" and "adults only" shows. The family friendly shows are hilarious and we always look forward to them. We have never gone to one of the adult shows but we are sure they get pretty raunchy pretty quick.

At dinner, we decided to branch out and try some new foods. I tried alligator and lobster for the first time.  The alligator wasn't bad but I was definitely not a fan of the lobster. 

After dinner we went to another theater show and then stood out on our balcony and watched a pretty neat rain storm blow through. It's always such a neat sight to watch a rainstorm when it is pitch black outside and you are in the middle of the ocean. One of my favorite things about cruises is the sights and sounds at night. So serene and peaceful. 

Southern Caribbean Cruise 2014 Day 3: St. Thomas

Day 3 was spent in the beautiful island of St. Thomas. St. Thomas is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands. This was probably our favorite place of the whole week. I had done a lot of research prior to this trip to find the best beaches, transportation options, activities, food, etc. In my research I found "Honeymoon Beach". Honeymoon beach is located just a short ways across the water from St. Thomas on Water Island. The only way to get there was via water taxi. It was a few miles away from the ship so we started walking. Soon after we started walking, a taxi pulled up next to us and offered us a ride for a great price! The taxi ride was easy and we arrived at the dock for the water taxi. The ride on the water taxi was only about 5 minutes long but it was beautiful! The island is so green, and the water is so clear and warm. As we arrived on Water Island, a little truck was waiting to take us down the the beach...for free! On the drive down, the driver was telling us about all the amenities he had down on the beach - floaties in the water, lounge chairs, restrooms, food truck, etc. We figured there must be a catch....there was no way this was all free! But it was! We spent a few hours swimming and playing in the warm ocean under the warm sun. When we were done swimming, we decided to try the special that the food shack was having that day: Lion Fish! It is a white fish and was a bit sweet and was super yummy! I wanted to see what a lion fish looked like so I looked it up when we got home....holy moly! I will never eat lion fish again.

When we were done swimming, the water taxi took us back to the main island and we decided to walk the 3 miles back to the ship! It was a beautiful and hot walk back but we enjoyed ourselves. Our calves and backs were sun burnt by the time we got back to the ship but we didn't care!

We showered, changed, and headed off to dinner. This was our first dinner at our assigned table and time. As soon as we had gotten on the ship the day before, we requested a table for 2 instead of risking being assigned to a table with other guest who weren't very fun to have dinner with (this is what happened on our honeymoon). We had a quaint little table for 2 with an awesome server. I decided that on this cruise I was going to try a variety of new foods. On this night I tried duck! It wasn't bad but wasn't my favorite.

One of our favorite things to do on cruises is have miniature golf tournaments. Every ship has at least one small mini golf course. This night, I came away with the win! I was feeling pretty excited.

The ships also have "Fun Shops", small stores where you can purchase souvenirs, jewelry, candy, and other small department store type goods. They were having a $10 sale on this night. Andrew and I both got new watches, I got a bag, and we also got tons of candy.

Another one of our favorite things to do on cruises is go to the Broadway style shows. The first night is always a special "Welcome Show" featuring a variety of singers, dancers, and other talented performers. It always gets us excited for the shows that are the come the rest of the week.

Our first full day was amazing. We had definitely started off our week so well that it was going to be difficult to top it!

Side note: Before we left on vacation, we bought a LifeProof case for my phone. These cases are waterproof and super durable. There is a water test that can be done before putting the case on your phone to ensure that it is truly waterproof. Some friends of ours recommended we do this so we can still use our phones in the water to get the best pictures possible. I was so nervous to put my iPhone in water but amazingly, it worked just fine! All of the pictures and videos we took were on my phone. Pretty neat, huh?!

Southern Caribbean Cruise 2014 Days 1 and 2: Travel

The last weekend in September 2014 (I know, I know. I'm way behind...) we embarked on our most amazing Caribbean cruise vacation! We booked this vacation way back in February and were anxiously awaiting September to arrive so we could go have some fun in the sun! The whole week was amazing; just what we needed before things got crazy at work for both of us. We did our best to take lots of videos so we could share all the fun with our friends and family! It was a busy week and there is a lot to show and tell! Enjoy!

We left Portland on a Saturday night. We took a Red-Eye flight to New York City. This was our first experience with a Red-Eye and I can pretty much guarantee that we won't be doing that again. I slept a little but Andrew didn't hardly sleep at all. We were exhausted. Overall, our flights were fine. We had a short lay-over in NYC during which we grabbed some breakfast and took the opportunity to freshen up. Our next flight was down to San Juan, Puerto Rico. We stepped off the plane and immediately felt the humidity. We got our luggage and went to check-in for our transfer service. Carnival Cruise Lines provides the option of using their airport to port transfer service. It's so handy and fairly inexpensive. We had only a 15 minute drive to port so we weren't able to see a whole lot of San Juan but we did see a few things.

We arrived at the port around 1p.m. We had been travelling since 7p.m. the night before and were running on very little sleep. We wanted a nap and a shower. Getting through security and check-in for the ship went very smoothly. Once we were on the ship, we had to wait about an hour before our room was ready. We grabbed some lunch and explored all the fun things that the ship had to offer. Once our room was ready, we went right there to get some shut-eye before the fun really started that evening! We took a nice long nap and woke a few hours later to find that Andrew's luggage had been delivered, but mine had not. I was a bit frustrated so I made a few phone calls and then waited some more. After a while, right before dinner, my luggage arrived! I was able to shower and spruce up for dinner. Dinner this night was not the usual format of sitting at your assigned table at your assigned time. It was a "come when you want" sort of a format. We were seated at whatever table was available. Our table had 8 other people. The food was great (like always) and the conversation was fun. We were finally feeling like we were on vacation!

After dinner, we had safety drills in our muster stations. It was so hot and humid and standing in the middle of a huge crowd of people with barely any breathing room for 45 minutes was a bit uncomfortable. We survived the safety drills, although I did start to have a minor panic attack. I was thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong and I was convinced that something terrible was going to happen to us! The ship was schedule to leave soon and there were a lot of fun activities going on to celebrate this. We debated going to some of these activities but ultimately decided to sit out on our balcony and watch the ship depart. It was beautiful. Yes, it was 11:00p.m. and 80 degrees and still 90% humidity, but the the city lights reflecting in the clear ocean water was breathtaking. This first night proved to us very quickly that we were in for quite an amazing week.  

Christmas 2014

I was lucky enough to have both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off that year! It will probably never happen again so we made sure to make the most of it. Andrew worked a half day on Christmas Eve so after he got home, we ran a couple of errands and headed to his dad's house for chili, gifts, and an outing to go look at Christmas lights. It was a perfect start to our Christmas.

Christmas morning we woke up to find that Santa had come! Santa was so good to both of us this year. Later in the morning, my parents, my brother and his wife, and Andrew's mom came over for more gifts, Christmas movies, snacks, and finally a yummy Christmas dinner. It was so nice to have our family over in our home with us on Christmas Day.

The following Sunday we celebrated Christmas with Andrew's mom, his brother and his wife and their three kids, and the dogs. We hung out, exchanged even more gifts, and finished off our Christmas celebration on a high note.

As we get older, the holidays start to have a different meaning to us. After such a tough year, we just wanted to be with our family. We didn't care so much about gifts. We didn't care so much about what the world was doing. We just wanted to celebrate the birth of our Savior with the ones we love most. We truly felt the true meaning of Christmas in our hearts and are already looking forward to future Christmases.

      Christmas Day 2014

      Christmas Eve 2014

Thanksgiving 2014

We did Thanksgiving a bit differently this year. I was scheduled to working Thanksgiving night and knew I would need to sleep in the afternoon, so we planned on having our Thanksgiving dinner Wednesday night. I had spent Wednesday afternoon preparing the complete Thanksgiving meal. We invited Andrew's mom over and we ate as soon as Andrew got home from work.

Thanksgiving day was spent lounging and napping before work. Andrew went over to his uncle's house for Thanksgiving dinner and I was able to stop by on my way to work. Although we did things a bit differently this Thanksgiving, we definitely enjoyed the holiday and the extra opportunity to reflect on our blessings and thank our Heavenly Father for all He has blessed us with.