January....Cruise time!

January we had fun bowling (with my handsome date)...

....Reagan fell in love with our neighbors miniature husky and carried it around like a baby for an hour...

....and CD was proud of his mud spots on his shirt from mountain biking.

I love how these three buds like to sleep by each other.

Then Nana Nuno and Maddie came to town to be our babysitters extraordinaire for 8 days while Carlos and I went on a cruise with some of his college friends. 

We had a girls day at the Tea Room before leaving.  It was the coldest weather we had all winter, so an afternoon sipping tea and eating all kinds of yummies felt good.

Then we left the kids in the hands of their Nana Nuno and Cousin Maddie who flew in to take charge.  The only way I would leave is if we had someone stay with them in our house that we trusted to give the kids their full attention and lucky for me Carlos arranged it all and it worked out great.   I'm sure Nana and Maddie slept good after leaving though :)

Carlos and I didn't actually plan to dress alike for the travel part of the trip, but these Rockwell sweatshirts are so comfortable and we didn't notice as we snuck out the door at 4:30am.  First trip alone since Rivers was born almost 11 years ago.  I'll admit, I cried on the way to the airport.

This is embarrassing to post, but we were on a cruise, so there are a lot of pictures of us in swimsuits, and this was the first morning in Puerto Rico, where I woke up, felt the warm, humid air, put on a swimsuit and had to take a pic of my spray tan before it wore off.  I've never had a spray tan before but when I saw a coupon in the paper for one, and had just been trying on swimsuits in the middle of winter showing off my snowy whiteness, I decided to give it a try.  The problem is after I got it, the lady told me to avoid salt water and chlorine, so it didn't last long on this trip!

We started our excursion in Puerto Rico!  We had a few hours before we had to be to the ship, so we headed to this fort built on the cliffs to scan the sea for attackers.

Gorgeous!

Wow, look how relaxed I look!  It was a weird feeling to not always be trying to keep an eye on little kiddos and to actually look around and enjoy the scenery!  (my elbow looks like it bends the wrong way)

Here is a rare whole group shot. 

Then we walked the ancient streets of San Juan.  Loved it!  I have a thing for old cobblestone streets.
 

Our room aboard the Celebrity Summit cruise line.

 

First night at dinner...and what a nice surprise dinner was!  It was awesome food!  My favorite that night was my feta and beet salad.  I think I ordered a different kind of fish every night. 



First stop was St. Croix, a US Virgin Island.  A few of us checked out this Danish built fort, that I found actually quite cute. 

You could definitely see the Danish influence in the architecture.  Good job Danes (I'm a little partial to my ancestry).

Speaking of Danes, there's a big one right there!  And one big Mexican.  It was fun seeing these two best buds back having fun together.  Most of us got off the boat each morning right as it docked at 8am and went running from the port around town and then went back to the ship to eat breakfast and change before heading out for the day to explore the island.  Believe it or not, Hans is actually a good distance runner.  The first day we ran about 6 miles and I got all dehydrated and shakey because I wasn't used to the heat and humididty.  Hans and Scotty were just fine though!



We took a boat from St. Croix out to Buck Island, which was so pristine.  Pres. Kennedy was struck by it's beauty and made it a nature preserve, so it is untouched and beautiful.  We practiced our snorkeling off the shore here before heading out to a reef.

The water was so crazy blue and beautiful!

 

 

I snorkeled with Carlos and Hans for about an hour before I got too cold and Carlos said my lips were blue.  We saw enormous lobsters, a few barracudas (which we kept trying to chase), a huge school of thousands of medium sized bright blue fish that we swam through, and tons of other beautiful sea creatures.  So fun!



At port

Formal night:  the girls with Scottie B. 

Our prom picture (Carlos made sure both of our watches were showing)

Our model pose.  Looks like we have fake wind blowing us just right for the photo shoot, but it was actually just a windy night.  That night the boys went to play Black Jack, the girls went to bed, and I went up to the top of the ship and shot the basketball around on their outdoor court.  I was all by myself so I wasn't embarrassed to be playing basketball in a long dress and heels, until a ship employee walked across the court and said hi, looking at me like I was crazy. 

The men

This made me think of Rivers (and her love of watermelon).
 

St. Kitts, US Virgin Island was our next stop and we had a beach day at a gorgeous beach where we layed under grass umbrellas and watched monkeys.  Then we danced the night away like dorks after dinner doing all the line dances.  Sometimes you just have to embrace the cruise mentality and go with it to have fun!

Probably my favorite stop was on Dominica in the West Indies.  It was a more tropical and jungley island and we spent the whole day canyoneering with Extreme Dominica.  I totally look like a 10 year old boy in this pic.  We got all suited up, drove into the heart of the forest, then hiked for at least 45 minutes up to the first rapel into the canyon.  On the hike up, I was wondering where we were actually being led because it appeared we were blazing our own trail.  I guess the guide knew where he was going, but we definitely weren't following a trail.  He explained we were the first ones to do the intermediate canyoneering in a month.  It was incredibly fun.  I loved the rapels the most. All but the first one were over waterfalls.  Makes me think I should get into climbing because I think rapelling is so fun.  The rest of the time we were floating through the river, bouldering over smaller waterfalls, drinking from a "clean" waterfall, and taking in the scenery of the gorgeous slot canyon.  It was raining a bit, so the guide kept radioing to make sure it was safe to continue, and the water was pretty forceful.  Loved it, loved it!  Scottie had a GoPro on the trip, so hopefully I'll get some of those pics soon in the actual canyon.

 

Next stop, Grenada, also in the West Indies, and so far South we were quite close to Venezuela.  This was known as the spice island, where they grow and cultivate spices.  We bought a bunch of fresh spices and I'm excited to start cooking with them.

We mostly played on the beach here.  We took a water taxi to a beautiful beach and I didn't feel like laying out, so I started my quest for a paddle board.  I had asked at various places and no one even seemed to know for sure what I was talking about.  I thought it was so fun when we had one on the San Juan Islands, that I walked at least a mile up and down the beach looking for somewhere I could rent one.  I happened to ask a kid sitting in front of a kayak rental place and he said he had a personal one I could rent!  I'm pretty sure it was actually a windsurf board, and it was pretty wobbly, but I took it and paddled about 1/2 mile down the coastline to the rest of the group to try.  It was entertaining and funny to watch the guys try to stand up on it, most of them falling immediately. 

Ah, Grenada!

We had one day at sea after Grenada and the boys entered the volleyball tournament against the staff.  Everyone cheered when they saw Carlos and Hans at the net.

 

Carlos and Scottie are so out!  It did feel really good to be lounging and get tired reading and realize "hey, I can just roll over and take a nap if I want to!"

Our last stop was St. Thomas.  I started out the day with a really fun run along the water and through the old town.  Very cute and quaint.  However, right around the port was a huge outdoor mall filled with all the high end Gucci, Prada kind of stores.  I guess it's known as the shopping island and a lot of the native people we talked to said they came to St. Thomas for the US money.  We had fun shopping at this open air market.

St. Thomas was originally occupied by Black Beard the pirate and the cove in this picture was a safehaven for all pirates.  I guess there are still several sunken pirate ships there that you can scuba dive around and you can't eat fish from this side of the island or you can get fish poisoning from all the metal in the water from the ships.  Black Beard ruled here for 40 years and his tower is in the background just to the left of my head.  You can barely see the flag sticking out of it.

Carlos and I went ziplining on St. Thomas while the others went to this most pristine beach ever, where we met them after our zip line tour.  The zip lining was fun but not as adrenaline filled as I had hoped:)  We took the GoPro on that too, so maybe I'll get some pics later.  The water at this beach was crazy!  It was clearer than a swimming pool!

The couple beach shot - wearing the swimsuit Carlos bought for me all on his own - nice job.  It's back to my "mom swimsuits" now.

And we went to all the karaoke nights on the boat.  Hans belted it out and we got the three of them up there to sing Boys to Men.  The best though was when finally after three nights of this, we finally, finally got Carlos to go up and sing his Garth Brooks, and the karaoke machine broke.  He was standing up there sweating, waiting for the song to start and they couldn't get the music to start.  I was so disappointed, but Carlos looked very relieved.

Our last gourmet meal, lookin' all bronzed at the end of the trip.  I wish being tan was healthy because I definitely think I look better with a little color.

 

Last sunset out at sea.  I was ready to get home to my kids!!!!  Unfortunately I contracted the respiratory flu on the way home and by the last leg of the trip into Eugene, I was feverish and shaking and couldn't do much but lay down when I got home :(  Three of the others in our group got it too!

I missed this girl so much!  I kept wishing she was there with us.  There were so many things about the trip she would have loved!  She sleeps in the teepee Tanner and Alissa made the kids every single night!

I was so worried about leaving these cutie patooties, but they did great with Nana and Maddie.  Reagan just never wants me to leave to go do anything and clings to me now ( I think she's worried I won't be back for a week again). 

Our favorite park - in Wilsonville.  It was a fun, relaxing trip, but I'm not sure I'll ever want to leave these guys for that long again!