Nothing starts a vacation off right like pretty toes. I wanted to take Adelyn with me for all the hard work she has been doing, without asking, around the house. I don't want to get in the habit of paying her for "chores" that I think they need to learn to do and participate in as part of a family. So we dropped Brecken and Joelle off at Papa and Grandma's and off we went.
She was SO excited. They put a little flower on her big toes. She can't wait to go back...it will be a while;)
I knew I had to VERY CLEARLY label my starter for my bread. Eric has said he has almost taken it to work, for lunch, and then he opens it and smells it and wonders why someone put dirty socks in the fridge. Which, by the way, it does not smell like dirty socks. It smells like a fine wine. But I could totally see my parents sniffing it and tossing it. So I labeled it.
We dropped the kids off at Nate and Joy's Friday night after supper. We went back home and we started cleaning up and packing. I made it into our bedroom at 9 to start packing my clothes. I discovered Brecken's stuffed sheep on my bed. He took it out to put clothes in his bag and it never made it back in. I also saw his book on the counter but hoped he picked a different one. I promptly texted Joy and asked if he was ok. Nope. He keep asking for a "jeep" and they could not figure it out. So I zoomed over there and dropped it off and she got everyone to sleep by 10;)
Our plane took off at 6, from GR to Chicago, the next morning so Eric's dad picked us up at 4:30. We made it to the airport and got all checked in. I texted Joy when we got to Chicago and everybody slept through the night without incident. Woohoo. Joy said she finally got Adelyn to go to bed with promises of "cereal and orange milk" in the morning. My children are deprived... Joy texted me a couple pictures of the kids eating breakfast..
Joy said she had to get some fruit in there so it wasn't all "bad" ;)
After breakfast Joy took William and Adelyn to a birthday party for a friend from church and left Nate at home with the littles (lucky him). I got this picture of Adelyn all dressed up. Aren't her socks hot?!
The birthday girl is in the front and William is showing off his cool prince moves to the right;)
When Joy got home Nate, Sawyer, Joelle and Brecken were all making pancakes and bacon. Yum.
A, B and J got W and S a puzzle for letting them play with all their toys. They assembled it and took their picture next to "the puzzle that was as tall as them!
William and Brecken were the only ones who wanted to help bake:):)
Saturday was a looooooooooong day for us. We went to bed at 11 on Friday and woke up at 3:30. Thankfully we were in Houston early and got on the boat around 1. We ate lunch and took a nap. I was slightly disappointed in the food choices at the buffets. There wasn't a ton that was gluten free and definitely not much in the way of desserts. Unless if I wanted Jello. But since I still have all of my teeth AND I'm not 90, I only did that once. Suppertime was definitely better. They brought me the menu for the next night and I got to pick what I wanted. You can also order as much as you want. They had GF bread they brought me every night. Since I'm a snob and make my own bread it pretty much tasted like cardboard. But I asked for some honey the first night and anything slathered in butter and honey tastes good. So they had honey laid out for me every night after that ;) Eric, on the other hand, was in carb heaven.
The first night we went to an illusionist show, which was quite obvious, but entertaining.
Sunday was our first day at sea and also our first formal night. We laid out all day. I didn't put sunscreen on right away and my chest got burnt. But my legs and arms didn't. Explain that. Part of my stomach was also hanging out, imagine that, and it got horribly burnt. It is still itching and peeling 10 days later. Adelyn is always asking "Let me see where you burned the baby!"
Formal night. We walked around the ship after dinner and were planning on going to see a movie. I promptly fell asleep at 8:00. Then I woke up at 5:30. But it was really 6:30. Because the time changed AGAIN.
Our first kid that has been out of the country;)
Our first stop was in Cozmel. We've been there before and it's nothing super exciting. If we ever "have" to go there again we will probably do an excursion. We took a taxi downtown and shopped. They have changed the shops, quite a bit, and they all sold a lot of the same stuff. We hopped back on the boat and took a nap before dinner. That night we went to a comedy show and stayed up late to watch Desolation of Smaug under the stars.
Tuesday was Honduras. Eric was feeling pretty good about docking here with this lovely view out our window. You can also see that the weather was lovely.
We decided to take an excursion to Tabayana beach. We know people who have gone there AND it gets 5 stars on TripAdvisor. It's supposed to be the best beach in the Caribbean. Ha. Ha. Ha. We should have taken note of the weather and saved our $130. Granted it was calm, albeit gray, by the boat. On the other side of the island, after an hour bus ride from you know where, it was cold, super windy and the waves were so bad we couldn't snorkel. The "road" system in Honduras probably should have put me into labor. Thankfully baby stayed inside.
"White sandy beaches" oooorrrr beaches covered in sauerkraut.
The view down the other end. Eric and I read our books for about an hour, took part in the crappy lunch that was provided, walked up and down the beach and left. That was fun.
Wednesday was Belize. That was my favorite day. And I would love to go back to stay on the island. They had lots of really cool touristy things to do and it wasn't as poor of a country as Honduras. Their road system was definitely not favorable, either, but it was slightly improved. We decided to go cave tubing and this is a picture of the bus that took us. In Eric's words, "Good news. We have a fire extinguisher on the bus. Bad news. It's a tube sock." There is supposed to be a fire extinguisher in the black container. Instead they filled it with tube socks. #thirdworldproblems Side note: I did google this and I am supposed to refer to Belize as a "Developing country." Because they are "moving forward." Duly noted.
No pictures of us actually cave tubing because I wasn't bringing my camera and an underwater camera was $20. No joke. But it was really cool and our tour guide was awesome. They did have fresh coconuts for sale so, of course, I had to get one. Yum.
This is the Sleeping Giant Mountain Range. Do you see it now? Forehead, nose and mouth on the right. Pretty cool. They have stories for ev.ery.thing and it was really neat to hear their history.
A view of one of their cemetery's. They have actually started burying people on top of each other because they are running out of room.
Wednesday night we watched Gravity under the stars and went to bed right after that. Notice the trend?? Ha.
Thursday and Friday we were back at sea and on our way to Houston. Thursday night we saw the illusionist, again. The first night was just a quick show and Thursday night was the full show. Again, pretty obvious, but entertaining.
Us on the deck Friday afternoon. I don't have very many pictures of our trip because it's pretty boring to take pictures of just us.. ;) Thursday and Friday were both very nice out and we laid on the deck both days. Friday night we watched Philomena under the stars...it was pretty good but a bit slow.
Saturday morning we had to quickly hop off the boat and take the first bus to Houston. It was an hour ride from port to the airport. Our flight left at 12:50 so we had to hustle. They only guaranteed the buses arriving for flights after 1:30. Turns out we ended up with 2.5 hours to burn at the airport. Yay. We did have a direct flight back to GR, so that was really nice. Unfortunately, it was on a tiny plane. See below.
This was as the plane was landing, right before we crossed the highway in GR. What a lovely welcome home view. Pure Michigan.
When we got to the airport my parents were waiting with a sign the kids had made and the kids were waiting for us. Adelyn and Joelle were SUPER excited to see us and ran right up. Brecken was ticked that he couldn't ride on a plane....and that I left him. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. He wouldn't let me hold his hand or hug him. When he got home all he wanted was Eric. "I want my Daddy. Not you, Daddy." If you know him that is unheard of. He used to get mad at Eric, if Eric would accidentally bump into me. "Don't hurt my Mommy!!!" He cried both nights for Nate and Joy and cried when my mom picked them up and drove them to our house "Only Mommy can drive my van!" but didn't ask for me after that...he gave up on me :( I've slowly been winning him back. He went with me to the chiropractor Monday morning and I am now allowed to hug him and kiss him freely. He comes for cuddles again....but is still insisting that his Daddy cuddles him and kisses him at night too. Joelle cried every night when she was with my mom. "I miss my Mommy!" Poor baby. Adelyn only had a problem one or two of the nights.
I had a little gift for the kids for every day we were gone. Monday they got to go to the Peanut Store and pick a treat, Tuesday they got Frozen on Blu-Ray, Wednesday they got a new book each, Thursday they got new crayons and stickers, Friday they got a craft and Saturday they got 2 Bernstein Bears books each and some dollar store snakes and frogs.
My mom made them each a really cool count-down calendar until we got home. She had a covered cup for each day and the kids got to punch it open. There was a little gift inside for them. They loved it and Eric and I thought it was such a fun idea:)
The one funny (disobedient) thing that happened while we were gone is that Adelyn squirted soap in the toilet every.single.day, multiple times a day. I finally found a liquid soap that wasn't anti-bacterial so I had filled up all our containers. I've tried making my own liquid but it just doesn't work AND Eric told me to never make it again.. We always use bar soap but I get that some people don't like it. And sometimes the kids prefer the liquid stuff. Towards the end of the week my mom said to the kids "What is happening with the soap? Your mommy filled it up before she left." Brecken and Joelle told on her "Adelyn has been squirting it in the toilet!" So my mom told her to stop and that she was going to have to tell me about it when I got home. So my mom had her tell me about it and she wouldn't tell either one of us why she did it. Nobody got mad at her, just told her it was wasteful and not to do it again...and WHY?! I was laying down with her Saturday night and I started asking her about it again. I told her I wasn't mad, I just wanted to know why she would keep wasting the soap. She finally said it was because she wanted to see if the toilet would make bubbles. HAHAHAHAHA. I tried really hard not to laugh. I may have snorted.
All in all it was a really fun trip. In my humble opinion I won't be leaving my children for that long, again, 8 days was a bit too long, 5 may have been perfect. But I am really weird like that. I missed them A LOT. I am soooooo thankful for Nate and Joy and my parents for watching our kids. With the baby coming we won't be getting any kind of a chance to take a vacation, with just us, for another 3-4 years so it was perfect timing for us to do it!
