Our Caribbean Christmas Cruise

Okay. I am playing a major game of catch up on our blog lately. When I get behind in blogging it really overwhelms me, and then I just keep putting it off and putting it off, and then I get REALLY far behind. But - I'm out of excuses now, so I guess it's time to start writing again. Haha. But, I'm warning you. This post is a doozy. Like, really long. Not for the faint of heart. :)

For Christmas, Dave's family took us on a 7 day Western Caribbean cruise. Awesome, huh!? We had the best trip ever, and despite my lateness in posting this I'm still excited to write about it since it lets me re-live the trip a little bit.

We were lucky enough that my mom was able to watch Lydia for us the week that we were gone. I missed her so much and thought about her every single day, but I'm not going to lie - it was nice! It was awesome to be able to have so much time to just focus on Dave. I could stay up late without worrying about how I had to get up early with Lydia the next morning and we could just up and go wherever we wanted to go, whenever we wanted to without packing enough diapers, wipes, food, water, extra clothes and entertaining toys for a little baby. I was so ready to see Lydia by the end of the trip though. It was fun to have something so exciting back at home that made me want to come home. I ran in the doors to my mom's house as fast as I could and gave Lydia the biggest, tightest squeeze ever. 

ANYway, our cruise left out of Miami and we flew into Miami the night before. We ate dinner at a yummy interesting Cuban place. I'll bet you'll never guess whose idea it was to go to an ethnic, "when in Rome" food joint. Haha. They actually did have a Spanish tortilla there that I was excited to order, but it wasn't as tasty as when Dave makes them for me at home.

I love B-Bug's face in this picture. Some of the food there was good, some was, well, interesting.

We got on the boat the next morning and had fun exploring it. Dave's brothers and sisters had never been on a cruise before, so it was fun to experience it for the first time with them. We looked around at all the fun things they had to do on the boat and made a plan for which food places we wanted to make sure we ate at during our days at sea. We played mini-golf, found the karaoke lounge, and most importantly, the frozen yogurt places!

Just before leaving Miami.

If you've ever seen the movie Thumb-tanic, then you will think this movie is funny. If you've never seen it, you probably won't get it.  But Dave has a weird obsession with the movie and so he made everyone in the family join in to make this video.

Our first official day on the boat was a fun day at sea. We had two of those during our trip, but since we pretty much did the same thing on both days, I'll just talk about them both now. Basically they involved sleeping in a little bit, exercising, eating a yummy buffet breakfast, lounging on deck chairs in the sun, reading, and eating frozen yogurt. Talk about a rough life, huh?? It was so great!

I love our book choices for the trip. Mine is Mansfield Park by Jane Austen and Dave's was Killing Patton by Bill O'Reilly. So pretty typical for us both. :)

Eating our frozen yogurt (or fro yo as we called it) while enjoying the ocean sunshine!

Seth liked to play basketball with the other young boys on the boat. He was the best of all of them though, for sure. 

Almost every night after dinner we would go to "our spot" and play games. We found a great little spot at the back of the boat where it was never crowded and really quiet. It was one of my favorite things of the trip.

After games, some of our party wanted to go see the entertainment. It looked boring to me and Lauren and B, so we got room service cookies, milk, and grilled cheese sandwiches just because we could while we watched Bride Wars. It was awesome. We didn't waste any time enjoying the comforts of the ship!

The next morning we arrived in Cozumel. Our excursion here was to catch a ferry over to Cancun and go see the Mayan ruins at Tulum. Dave and I were so excited about this stop because we went to Cancun for our honeymoon and we had been to see Tulum too. It was fun to reminisce and to go see them again. They are beautiful, and so worth seeing, even if it's more than once. :)

This picture was a must. Three Amigos is one of Dave's favorite movies of all time.

Of course Dave wanted to stop and take a picture with the band. 

Isn't it gorgeous!? I would totally want to live here if I was a Mayan. We learned that it was only for the well-to-do Mayans though, so hopefully I would have had enough money. :)

This is from our honeymoon almost 6 years ago. But fun that it's the same building in the background, huh??

The ruins were awesome! It was crazy to be there looking at something that was so OLD. Like - way, way, way old. It's so neat that they are still so well preserved. 

Our Mexican nautical Christmas tree.

After our trip to the ruins, we got back on the boat to get ready for dinner. We had so much fun at dinner every night. We had the cutest servers ever, and so that made it even more fun to go there each night. I think that the food had improved a lot since our last cruise we went on, too. So that was a plus.

Let me introduce you to my friend chocolate melting cake. At least someone in our group had this dessert every. single. night. It is SO SO SO SO good. A chocolate lover's heaven, that's for sure. I had melting cake withdrawals when we got home from our trip and I didn't have a warm cake waiting for me every night at dinner. Although my waist appreciated the withdrawals. :)

Our next stop was Belize. Dave and I had been there before on our last cruise and we loved it SOO much the first time that we were so excited to go there again. It is absolutely beautiful there and the people are so friendly and funny. 

Belize has a huge reef that is protected right outside of the coast, so the cruise ship can't pull in right near the shore. We had to be tendered in, and this guy was helping with our tender boat. He was cracking us up the whole way over there. 

Our excursion in Belize was cave tubing, which is exactly what it sounds like. You get an inflatable tube and ride it through a cave. At some places it gets really dark, so they give you headlamps to use. The scenery here was incredible! Although we got the short end of the stick when it came to a guide (he kept running us into rocks and getting us all backwards, and we were going turtle speed the entire way. Everyone kept passing us!), I think everyone still had fun.

Again, another thumb-tanic reference. But this one is with the go-pro, so at least you can see underwater. :)

So remember how I said we had been to Belize before? We had done the same thing when we came with my family 2 years before. We went cave tubing, but we had the most AWESOME guide. His name was Mike, and he was this total Rastafarian, no worries, go with the flow guide. Plus I think he was the most ripped guy I've ever seen in real life. Dave was totally jealous of his muscles. Anyway, we had tried to get his contact info for Dave's family but we couldn't find any information on him. We looked FOREVER, but to no avail. So, we just went with a big tour group instead. Well, when we were at the cave tubing place, guess who we ran into?? Mike! How crazy is it that he would be there at the same time we were?? There were hundreds of people there, so crossing paths with him was such a low possibility. Anyway, he said something to our group and then I recognized him and I said, "Hey, your name is Mike, isn't it?" He looked at me a little wary-like, and said, "Yes..?" I then explained how he had taken our family down the river 2 years ago and he had a good laugh about that. I told him it was good karma that let us meet up again and he said, "We Rastafarians like to call it 'good vibes'." Haha. So we got his contact information so the next time we, or anyone else we know, travels to Belize they can look him up and have him for a guide. 

Mike with my family in 2012

Me and Dave with Mike again in 2014. We kept telling him we hardly recognized him without his dreadlocks. He kept laughing and telling us that they just fell off one day. Hahaha. He is so funny. 

That night was New Year's Eve. It is so crazy to spend New Year's Eve in the middle of the ocean with a few thousand other people. They had a special menu in the dining room that night with extra fancy food and they even had party hats and little blow horns for us. We enjoyed our dinner, went to "our spot" to play some games until it was close to midnight. Then we went and found another good spot for us on the deck of the ship and danced around to the music while we waited to ring in the new year!

The next morning came very early, but we were in Roatan, Honduras and didn't want to miss out on any time there. Our excursion for Roatan was zip lining through the jungle and then a little bit of beach time too.

Dave loves to get pictures with all of the little singing groups that are right off of the boat. I don't know how thrilled THEY were, but he was pretty excited.

And of course he couldn't pass up a chance to dance with them.

Last time we were in Honduras we went scuba diving, which was super fun, but because of that we didn't get to spend too much time above the water! The jungle we zip lined through was GORGEOUS. So lush and green and tropical-looking. I think it was the prettiest tropical place I've ever seen.

This little guy had a monkey at the zip line place that loved to climb on people's shoulders. It was a little creepy and a little cute at the same time.

After zip lining, we enjoyed the beach! The sand was so soft and it was so warm and sunny and nice outside. A perfect place to enjoy some sunshine!

So this lady kept coming to talk to Dave about giving me a massage. I was a little nervous about it, but she kept lowering and lowering her price. She eventually got it down to where it was WAY cheaper than anything you could get back home, and I decided that a massage on the beach would be pretty fun actually. She ended up kind of tricking me into a longer massage for more money, but you can't feel too angry to give your money to these poor people. All 6 of us kids actually ended up getting a massage. It was a great deal and who can say they got a massage on a beautiful Honduran beach!? At least 6 people I know can. :)

Pulling away from Roatan. Isn't it so pretty??

So, on carnival they have a "didja" as in 'did you ever' section where they feature all kinds of interesting, exotic food that you may not have tried before. I didn't try anything from there, (of course), but Dave tried everything (of course). He ate alligator, shark, frog legs, snails, and ox tongue. He didn't like everything, but was happy to say he at least tried everything.

Our next and last stop was Grand Cayman. The first big trip that my family ever took us on was to Grand Cayman, so it was an even more fun stop for me. I recognized a lot of things, and even found the hotel we stayed at almost 12 years ago. Crazy! Anyway, Grand Cayman has AWESOME diving, so Dave and I went diving there while the rest of his family went to Sting Ray City (also awesome. We did that when I came with my family). But we weren't scheduled to do those things until the afternoon, so we spent the morning at seven mile beach just relaxing in the super soft, white sand. 

The water here is SO clear and blue. It was fun to just hang out on the beach for awhile.

My cute Davey.

Seth was a good sport and let us make him a sand mermaid.

We had taken my dad's go pro camera with us on the trip for the sole purpose of using it while we went diving. It takes great underwater footage and pictures and we were so excited to use it. The wind was blowing kind of hard for our first dive and so the current was moving the sand around on the bottom a lot, so for our first dive the visibility wasn't great. So, we didn't take too many pictures. And then when we came up to wait inbetween dives, we forgot to charge the camera! So when we got into the water for our second dive, the water was clear and beautiful and the visibility was awesome. I took one picture - ONE - and then the battery died. Of course! We should have been smarter and charged the camera. Luckily, there were two other divers in our group that were pretty serious about diving and getting underwater pictures. They had a crazy awesome camera with these giant underwater flashes, and they were nice enough to send us their pictures they took. We saw tons of sea life on the second dive, so we were so grateful that they were able to get us their pictures.

On our boat ride out to dive! Can you even handle the water here?? This picture doesn't even do it justice, but the water was AMAZINGLY clear and blue.

Right before we jumped in!

My one and only picture of Davey. All the rest of the pictures are courtesy of our friends. 

These fish are one of my favorite kind. They're called trumpetfish because their snouts look like a trumpet. They are so fun looking!

Talk about a camouflage fish!!

Isn't he awesome!?!?

I can't believe I saw one of these in real life!! I felt like I was in Finding Nemo chasing the spotted ray teacher!

Mr. Ray, from Finding Nemo. Pretty similar, huh??

Cute little eel!

I can't believe people actually eat these things. 

Dave found a quick geocache on the way back to the ship. He almost missed the last tender boat back, which was giving me MAJOR anxiety. He made it just in the nick of time though.

The next day was another fun day at sea while the boat traveled back to Miami. We did about the same things as we did the first day at sea. It was nice to be able to sleep in and not feel rushed trying to get to where we needed to be for our excursions. And it was nice to have frozen yogurt available whenever we felt the slightest craving for it. :) 

We had so much fun on our cruise and were so thankful to the Dalgleish's for taking us on such an awesome trip. We especially love cruises because of the fact that you don't have cell phone service. So, it eliminates all distractions from that area. No facebook, no instagram, no texting, no work calls, no nothing! It really lets you focus more on each other and build some awesome, technology-free memories, which it seems are hard to come by these days.

Look at the dust on my phone!! It was so fun not to even turn it on! :)

We were sad to come back to work and responsibility, but glad to be coming back to see our little Lydia. We missed her!! 

Thanks again to the Dalgleish's for a super fun, amazing trip! Let's do another one soon, ok!?