Thursday, October 14, 2010

Family Room

So I took these pictures of our family room forever ago and decided it was time to show a little more of our house. We have just begun our first major project (in the nursery) so hopefully will have some good before and after pictures by the end of the month. Actually, painting in this house is a major project due to the soaring ceilings...but we won't count that.

Obviously I didn't clean up all of the doodads that had accumulated on the pass-through...please ignore.



Here is a quick peak at our adjoining kitchen. It is smaller that I would like but so far works just fine for our 3-member family. We really haven't done much to it other than replace that hideous light fixture over the kitchen table. One day when we have lots of extra money to spare (please say this will be the case one day!) those ugly kitchen cabinets will be gone!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Cruise




OK so I am finally posting the pictures from our cruise as requested. Of course it is hard to narrow the trip down to a few pictures but I will do my best. We went with Christin (above), my friend from PA school, and her husband Bert, on a 7 day Western Caribbean cruise. We arrived in Miami on Saturday afternoon. We went to a place called Bayside for linner (never ate lunch) and shopping. Then we went to South Beach for awhile and got back to the hotel late.

On Sunday we boarded the ship and did some exploring. Brandon and Bert didn't waste anytime starting off with some ice cream cones...the first of many each day. Monday we spent at sea...pool, reading, eating and shows. Tuesday we went to Grand Cayman. We went to a sandbar called Stingray City where the stingrays come and we fed them squid. It was amazing! A little scary at first when they literally charge right into you to get the food, but awesome! That's Christin and I checking out a stingray.Seven years good luck for every kiss. Then we went snorkeling and then to gorgeous 7 Mile Beach. This was the most beautiful island and water and there was NOONE there. The resorts on the beach looked like they must be closed...we would definitely return.

Wednesday was Roatan Island (Honduras) where Brandon and I went scuba diving. We saw turtles, eels and lots of fish...also a cool wrecked ship. Afterward we had a little time to meet up with our friends at a beach near the port.Thursday was Belize and maybe my favorite. We did zip-lines through the jungle canopy. LOVED it!
Then we went cave tubing. There is a river that runs through caves in the pitch black. So cool!
At the end of the day with our awesome guides.
Friday we docked in Cozumel but Brandon and I went to the mainland so we could go to the Mayan ruins of Tulum. We ended up ditching our tour group shortly because we were too impatient to wait every 5 minutes for all the slow people. So we walked around ourselves.
It was blazing hot there...good thing the Mayans were so smart to build their temples right over the beautiful Caribbean ocean! We had to go for a swim to cool off.
Saturday was another day at sea. We were exhausted from staying out late each night at the shows and then getting up early for our excursions. So we were glad to have another day to just relax. Brandon and I didn't get out of bed until 11am. This is on the last formal night.
This is us at our table together on the last night of the cruise :(We arrived in Miami Sunday morning. Since we had several hours until our flight home, Brandon and I decided to do an excursion to the Everglades. We saw lots of alligators just hanging out (there were no fences in the park).We went on one of these sweet air-boats and saw more alligators and snapping turtles.
We got to hold this baby named Snappy.It was a fabulous cruise and great company. We are so grateful to my mom for allowing us to go by watching Ty. We are already planning our next cruise together. We want to do the Panama Canal...probably won't happen since it is a 14 day cruise and we both have kids...but we can dream, right?