Cruisin' With The Riches

Let's begin by acknowledging the fact that we are completely spoiled and indebted to my in-laws for this fabulous trip. (As well as many others.)

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

Jesse and I spent 4 weeks apart while he traveled for work prior to our trip (essentially all of July), so it was thrilling to be reunited again. 

Of course the days leading up to it were crazy while I worked three days, managed my two hooligans and my mom's dog I watched for the month, and packed up everything for our respective trips; the boys to my parents and me and Jesse for our cruise. 

We survived the packing and journeyed down to St. George on a Friday as early as we could get going, which of course wasn't overly early. It wasn't a bad drive, although I've had better. 

Our stop in Beaver was a little rocky. The boys needed diaper changes and I had to use the restroom, so unfortunately I had to take the kids into the gas station with me to take care of business. It had been raining so while I was griping their wrists for dear life so they didn't run wild, they were jumping through all the puddles spraying all three of us with dirty rain water. But we finally made it into the gas station and I pinned Briggs down to change him while I threatened Ian not to move. We then switched roles and after chasing Briggs down back out in the gas station, I herded them into the bathroom so I could take care of my business, and not 20 seconds go by before the door was opened and I was hollering at my children "CLOSE THE DOOR!"

This is why we don't go places.

Anyway, after everything was taken care of and we somehow made it back to the car and got strapped in, it was time to let the dog out for a potty break as well, so I parked over by some weeds and let her out, and of course the first thing she does is run through a belly deep puddle. Ugh. So then continued our journey with a wet dog in my car. Luckily she dried out fairly quickly.

I dropped off the boys, who by the way, just said "BYE!!!" and wouldn't even give me a kiss before I left. (They have way too much fun at Grandma's house.) And off I went to Vegas to meet my sweet husband.

Then about 12 hours of traveling later, we finally made it to Puerto Rico.
(And just to prove I still had no idea of where I was going, I am pretty sure I said I was glad we made it to Costa Rica.
Obviously I need a geography class.)

We met up with a chunk of our group and headed to the boat.
Oops, I mean ship.

Our first stop on Sunday was St. Thomas.

We had a nice Sunday Devotional on the ship, and then hoped off to visit the butterfly sanctuary.

We of course went as a matching pack of red shirts so as not to lose anyone.

The butterflies were beautiful.

I especially liked this table they set up for them to have a snack.

Can you spot the green butterfly above Jesse's head?
Camouflage in action.

The little kids took some time to fish with leaves in the sanctuary.
I don't know how they come up with these things, but it's rather awesome.

Well, now that it's been like 2 months since we cruised, I can't quite remember, but I think we had a formal night the evening of St. Thomas. 

 

Our next stop was St. Kitts.

We hopped on a bus and headed off to a black sand beach. 

 Our bus ride took us to this overlook for the view

It was rather windy up there. 

 And this might have been my favorite thing up there.

Well besides the actual "fun donkey."

Oh and here's the donkey's friend monkey from the ledge too. 

And then we hit the beach.

 Which happened to be on this particularly steep slope.
I might have laughed out loud when I walked down to it. It caught me off guard.

 My brother-in-law was awesome and participated in a soccer game on the ship.

He then still had the energy to play with the three youngest kids on the trip.

Our next stop was Aruba and we went to a gorgeous beach there. 

The water was so blue and clear, and it was just breath taking. 

My BIL and SIL rented some paddle boards for an hour or two and let us all take a turn. It was harder than we anticipated to stand up and paddle, but we sure had fun sitting and paddling.

Our last stop was Curacao. 

Jesse and I went out with my sister in law and her family and took some family pictures first thing in Curacao, and we had a blast. Curacoa was beautiful, but this was quite possibly our favorite part of the day.

 

We took a bus tour around the island and enjoyed the bright colorful town. 

 These four ended up being rather matchy matchy that day.

And our bus tour, might have put a few people to sleep. 

Our bus driver took us to the outside of this aquarium place to see the seals (or sea lions? I can't ever remember the difference. Jesse says it has something to do with ears.) And it was beautiful. 

One cute little nephew dropped his shoe over the edge and a worker had to get it out for us before it was eaten and lost forever.

Luckily they were also willing to scoop out the stuffed turtle our niece dropped down there as well.

It was such a fun week with these folks.
We met daily for devotionals, ate our dinners together, played games, saw shows, ate loads of food, and relaxed. It was so fun!
And Jesse and I completely enjoyed our second honeymoon.