Our Trip of a Lifetime!!!

Yes. We did.



We took the trip of a lifetime! At least it was for us anyway. We've both been on some pretty awesome vacations, mostly with our families. This was the first time Tyler and I had ever taken a trip like this together. Alone. With no kids! Just us two! We have seriously never been on a trip like this before together. And wow, it was amazing!! And totally worth it. And totally needed.



Lots of things will soon be happening to our little family creating change, happiness, havoc and stress.

1. Tyler will finish his PhD this spring!! (YAY! This will get it's own post once it actually happens).
2. Tyler will be going back to med school for 3rd year -- the year of craziness!!
3. Our 8 year anniversary is this year. It happens to fall right on the day that Tyler starts med school again.
4. Max will be starting kindergarten in the fall.

Tyler and I have been talking about going on a trip for a while. We pretty much figured it would be years before we could actually do anything like what we wanted to do. But, thanks to a lull in Tyler's lab work, a generous tax return, an available and willing mother-in-law and every other single karma card falling in place -- WE BOOKED AND WENT!! It was about a total of 3 days from when we pondered the idea to when we booked all the tickets and left a week later. It was fast. But perfect!

We settled on a cruise to the Bahamas. We'd only been on one other cruise when Max was about 11 months old. We had a lot of fun and were curious about other cruise lines. We ended up getting a killer deal, too. Tyler's mom graciously agreed to wrangle our monsters for us for a whole week. Seriously, she's awesome. We for sure would not have been able to go without her. There aren't many people I trust to leave my kids with. She's on the VERY short list. And she was awesome. The kids I'm pretty sure didn't ask for us once. She cleaned the house, did our laundry and stocked our fridge. Um -- yeah, if you weren't jealous before, you are now!! Honestly though, Tyler and I wouldn't have been able to even go if we didn't have 100% confidence that our kids were being taken care of, probably better than us!

Anyway... we had the most amazing time. We felt like kids running around with no curfew. We sat on beaches and did nothing. Saw dolphins and amazing blue oceans. We ate tons of delicious food, had ice cream cones late at night, played shuffle board, snorkeled, bought one ridiculously expensive fruity drink on board the ship, read books, rode horses on the beach, spent lots of time together just enjoying each other and napped in the sunshine!

We flew to Miami and stayed overnight and boarded our ship the next morning -- The Norwegian Sky!
 













Day 1 we arrived in Freeport. A very industrial island.



We ended up getting lucky with the excursion we picked for the day and got to ride horses through the forest and down onto the beach! We had originally chosen a kayaking excursion but it filled up and we ended up with horses. It was perfect though. That day it was pretty overcast (very warm though) and later on the boat we heard some people complaining about how it was kind of cold in the kayaks.






The lady who ran the stables and owned the horses was pretty wild!! She was this petite little thing with long gray hair, leathery tan skin and a seriously large collection of shelter rescue cats (I think she said there were over 40 cats). She called everyone by where they were visiting from, told us stories of how she had been all over the world training and riding horses and led us on our little tour of Freeport.








Here we are on our horses!! Tyler's horse was named Legend and my horse was Winter Rose. Winter and I bonded because we were both moms. We understood each other. And I let her snack on ferns during our tour.

Later that day we headed back out to walk around the Straw Market on the dock. Lots of "island" junk souvenirs and lots of cheap conch shells (that we definitely brought home).









One weird thing about this cruse ship -- the creepy animals they make you pose with while you are disembarking. The first day they had a weird bird, a ship's wheel and some other weird thing they make you pose with.




Oh, and did I mention that because the Bahamas used to be owned by the British, they talk in these totally awesome accents AND they drive on the other side of the car and road. While taking a taxi to the stables I was so freaked out every time they took a right hand turn! It was so weird!


And I can't forget to mention some of the other fun things around the ship:

$8 fruity drink that didn't taste all that great. We also didn't realize it would be $8.




The fact that Tyler gets a little crazy when presented with a buffet.


And twinsies!


Day 2 We were in Nassau, Bahamas. That's the capital of the Bahamas.


It was an amazingly gorgeous day!! We decided to take do an excursion that took us to a private lagoon. It included dolphins, private beach with amazingly shallow warm water, lots of fish and lunch! It was worth EVERY penny!! This place was amazing. It was the picture of tropical island -- exactly what Tyler and I had pictured when we thought of our trip.



There were some pretty amazingly huge mansions all along the shore that we saw on our ferry ride to the lagoon. A lot of them were celebrity owned. Maybe one day one of them will be Seibert owned... sigh...






Here's the entrance to the lagoon.

(These pictures are not edited! Straight out of camera!)















Amazingly clear water!
















Day 3 we spent on the cruise line's private island, Great Stirrup Cay. We were the lucky ones that got to experience their brand new remodeled island for the first time! They had a new building for the lunch buffet and places to sit and relax. Not everything was completed and when it is it will be an amazing place!





We started off on one side of the island and then went around the corner and saw it was practically deserted! So we stayed there for the rest of the day. We relaxed and snorkeled a bit. I'm not a huge fan of snorkeling, but because the water is so warm and clear and shallow it's a lot easier to see everything.









And of course we couldn't forget our babies!




The fourth day we were back in Miami. Tyler and I spent about 7 hours in the airport waiting for our flight, thinking back over our amazing trip. By that day we were starting to miss our kids and decided it had been the perfect amount of time to be away from them.

Our trip was amazing! We kept waking up every morning in awe of where we were and going to sleep every night marveling at how exactly perfect the day had been. It was the perfect vacation. We had the time of our lives! We're now ready to take on the rest of this crazy year!! And when things get tough, all we have to do is look at these pictures and remember how perfect life really can be.