CRUISE!!

Ugh, Blogger's not working with me, I can't get my cursor above this picture, so we'll start down here. The above picture was on our 1am flight, so that's why we look so tired. But it was the beginning of our trip, so we were so excited! We went on a Caribbean cruise last week, and here I am to tell you all about it! There are exactly 30 pictures in this post, so here we go...

We had the 1am flight, then another flight, then we were in Miami! So we were very tired during the whole getting-on-the-ship process. I only managed a couple pictures that day. These are at dinner. The first of many amazing eating experiences...
This is kind of a gross picture, but I had some awesome ribs and I forgot to take a picture before I ate it all. So yummy...
I gave Brandon a new anniversary/wedding ring. I've had the idea for a few years now. His original ring was getting pretty scratched up, and it wasn't very much money in the first place, so I wanted to replace it. I had it inscribed too. He was very surprised. :) And he loved it. Yeah!
The first official day of the cruise was traveling on the boat, so we laid out and ate a lot. We also tried the gym, which we continued throughout the week. Aren't you proud? We needed something to counteract all the food. By the way, it's really weird running on a treadmill on a rocky boat. Gravity is with you, then it's against you. Repeat for the next 45 minutes. But I like a challenge. :) First book of the cruise: Mockingjay. Pretty good, but I was a little disappointed in the ending. One of the cool parts of the cruise- unlimited french fries with ice cream. Yum...
And while I was gorging myself with french fries, Brandon was eating a pear. Don't worry- he had plenty of frozen yogurt all week too. And he's wearing his new ring, if you want to check it out.
That night was the 'elegant' dinner. We pretty much dressed in church clothes. Brandon striking a pose...
Then me. Check out my awesome shoes! Those were a last-minute addition. I borrowed them from my mother-in-law. They were kinda hard to walk in though-the boat was pretty wobbly.
Wednesday- Grand Turk Island. It was pretty perfect. The only problem is that Brandon can only stand being in the sun for about 30 minutes. So everywhere we went we had to find one chair in the shade for him, and one chair in the sun for me. It was beautiful though.
By this time my chair was shaded, but I guess that's okay. :) Again, it was perfect. Lying around reading books. Book 2: My Name is Asher Lev. I read it in college and wanted to re-read it. Loved it all over again.
We got some cocktails that day- non-alcoholic of course. The waitress thought we were crazy...
Mmmm... pina colada...
Sandy toes. I don't know what it is, but sandy toes make me happy.
Then we played football on the beach for a while, went swimming, and got back on the boat. We forced someone to take our picture first...
Thursday- Half Moon Cay Island. I'm not kidding you, if I could create the ideal paradise, this would be it. You have no idea. It is perfect. The lens was blurry but I still liked the photo...
Lens now clear, but we didn't really want to pose anymore...
The sand was like powder, the water perfect (but it needed waves). We rented some snorkels and swam for a long time, read a lot, hung out, ate some BBQ for lunch, read some more, and got back on the boat at 5ish. I honestly wanted everyone to bribe the captain to stay an extra day.
This is what was going through my head: "Let's see. If we get a wireless air card for Brandon's computer, and a satellite phone, and rented some kind of shack, we could live here. That's totally doable. We'll just pick up the girls and come back."
I really didn't want to leave. I was dragging my feet back to the boat. Hubs looked really good too. It was honestly heaven on earth.
Friday: Nassau, Bahamas. We were a little spoiled from Half Moon Cay, so we rented a scooter to find a good beach and explore the island. My goodness, when we got that scooter, you would think that they gave Brandon a bar of gold. He had so much fun driving that scooter around. Every once in a while he'd turn to me and say, "This is awesome!" He probably felt really in-control. I was on the back navigating. But it was really weird driving on the left side of the road. Brandon adjusted pretty quickly though.
We went to 7 different beaches, and none of them were very good. We just had paradise the day before, so it was hard to go back to just normal. This one was called 'Jaws Beach,' hence the scared faces.
It wasn't terribly pretty, so we left.
Then we found a cave. With bats. It was pretty fun.

There was a hot dog stand by the cave, so Brandon got a hot dog, and I got...A Coke! Oh man, it tasted good. On the boat, they wanted to you pay a million dollars and your left leg for soda. K, maybe not the leg, but the million dollars. So I went without Coke all week. The stand had them for a good price, so I indulged. I didn't have much time to read my book this day. By the way, Book 3: Foreign Influence. Entertaining and suspenseful, but not my favorite.
Definitely written by a republican, so that was nice. :)
We gave the scooter back and went window shopping. If you know Brandon you know that he was chewing his arms off one by one while shopping he hates it so much, so we didn't do it very long. Then we went back to the boat. We stopped and took a picture by the Disney cruise boat. Not our boat, but we were talking just the day before about taking the girls on a Disney cruise. If you look close, you can see Donald hanging outside...
We got ready for dinner for the very last night, and took some pictures in the booth. Not the best pictures, but oh well.

We were trying to look sexy. Yeah, I know. Give us a break...

These were our dinner partners the whole week. It was slightly awkward the first day having dinner with strangers, but it was fine the rest of the week. Brandon can make anyone laugh. They're from New Jersey. They've been married a year or so.

We're relatively boring when it came to nighttime entertainment. We went to a 'PG comedy show' one night, but apparently the comedian thought that meant 'not funny comedy show,' cuz he wasn't very good. We did some trivia game shows other nights, watched Karaoke one night (that was hilarious, by the way), and started to watch the big finale show. That was a mistake. It pretty much consisted of naked Vegas showgirls dancing around the stage. So we left that and just walked around a bit. Pretty fun for us, but probably boring for most people. Anyway, the next morning we headed out to the airport.

We were pretty sad to leave. But we were excited to go see our babies again! And I have to say a big, huge, monstrous THANK YOU to my Mother-in-law Linda for watching the kids so we could go. It was SO fun having you over. I only wish you could have stayed longer. Thank you!
Next time I probably won't do Carnival. Maybe Royal Caribbean. Carnival was okay for a first cruise, but a different cruise line I think would be more fun. I only got through 3 books, which was slightly surprising. I thought I could do 4. But I was enjoying the company of my hubby, you know? :) Anyway, it was a blast. Next time I'd also like to go with friends. So what do you say? In 5 years we'll all go. Let's plan on it. :)