Home, Sweet Home: December 2012

Friday, December 28, 2012

Cozumel, Mexico!!

Our first stop was Cozumel, Mexico! The water was absolutely beautiful!!

Doug and Kylee hopped in a jeep, and explored the island!

Ready to explore!

Will and I decided to take a ferry across to mainland Mexico and go explore the Mayan ruins! It was a fun adventure and a neat experience!

Beautiful!!! This was the view that the Mayans had from their stone fortresses... One side protected by sea, and a heavy stone wall protecting the Mayans from the other three sides from evasions.

Just us girls =)

There were many other people visiting the Mayan ruins, hence lots of willing people to take a picture of us! Perfect!

Love this picture! The Mayan ruins in the background...

The ruins were pretty impressive....must've taken a lot of hard labor to make each structure!

The ocean is behind this building...

Gotta love Mexico! Walking barefoot...and behind him, there were two men riding on a scooter...one man in the back holding onto a ladder, and the man driving holding onto some large buckets! A+ for creativity! =D

Waiting for the ferry to come to take us back to Cozumel! Lily was quite a trooper the whole day!

What a wonderful day!! Smiles as we head back on our cruise ship

Ocho Rios, Jamacia!

Unfortunately, we didn't see much of Jamaica...Will got sick we think from eating some delicious food while in Mexico. When we docked in Jamaica, we headed off the boat with the intent of exploring, but had to make tracks back to the ship so Will could rest. But, we hope to go back to explore!

Every night, we came back to our room with a cute little animals made out of towels! This one was a rabbit...

A koala...very cute!

Cayman Islands!!

Will was feeling better for our next stop at the Grand Cayman Islands, yah! I saw this idea on Pinterest with the chalkboard since we were celebrating our 10 year anniversary by going on the cruise!

Doug and Kylee...10 years!

Grand Cayman was absolutely beautiful!! The friends in Miami told us of some of the friends on this island that own a shoe store. So, we went out in search of it! It was so nice to meet them! The owner of the store, Ishmael (his wife was gone on a trip) took us all over the island site seeing! It was so nice to spend time with him, and so nice of him to take time to give us a tour! =) This is 7 mile beach on Cayman...a stretch of beach that goes for 7 miles long..

Another popular attraction on the island is the turtle farm. They collect turtle eggs laid by these huge turtles on the beaches, and raise them, and then send them back into the wild. A better chance of survival..

Ishmael is on the right...he got this man that he knows that works at the Turtle Farm to give us a quick tour...

Holding a baby turtle..

It was trying to fly away!

Good-bye! Good days to you!

Dining in style!

A large portion of the cruise was spent eating! Delicious food, and everything you can image or want! Doug was especially happy with the self-serve ice cream/frozen yogurt machine stocked with deliciousness night and day! I think we were all going through withdrawls when we got back home! The service was amazing!! The waiters represented 58 different countries around the world! They were so friendly and absolutely loved Lily! She was the main attraction on the ship and got lots of different people to smile sweetly at...I think it melted everyone's heart!

This chilled strawberry soup was absolutely delicious!! Yumm, yumm, yummmm!

Cheese!

Lily getting some snuggles from our waitress!

Elvir, one of our other waiters. Elvir was amazing! Such a nice guy!

Monday, December 24, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!!

I love Thanksgiving! It is my favorite holiday by far! Being together with family...eating delicious food...a wonderful combination! This year we enjoyed hosting Thanksgiving at our house! It was so fun, and so nice to be together!