Autumn

We have had one of the most mild and beautiful fall's that I can remember! The kids had so much fun playing outside, watching all the leaves change color and enjoying the wonderful weather while it lasted.

We have a small park at the end of our circle~ it is the perfect way to spend a nice afternoon with the boys while waiting for Shayden to get home from school.

We went to Gardner Village with some friends for the Witch Festival.

My dad came up to visit and we took the kids to the zoo. I love this picture because without knowing it, Jackson is making the same face as the eagle he is riding!

I am going to miss seeing this once it starts snowing! The past few months have been so wonderful~ Jackson is finally old enough to play outside with the "big kids" and they play so nicely together (for the most part)!

I am not quite ready for winter to be here~ but then again, if it was up to me winter would never get here and we would just go right into spring! A girl can wish....

Finally Halloween

Okay, with all those cruise posts finally out of the way I can get back to posting the more important things~ like pictures of my kids at Halloween.

At the beginning of October I asked Shayden what she wanted to be for Halloween and she told me a vampire. I told her no because I didn't want anyone to think that I had anything to do with her wanting to be a vampire as a result of the whole Twilight phenomenon. However, she kept insisting that she wanted to be that, so I made sure that she looked like a "real" vampire and not like Bella :)

Once Tanner heard that Shayden wanted to be a vampire, Tanner didn't want to be anything but a vampire as well.
And what else would Jackson want to be besides exactly the same thing as his brother and sister?!

I dressed up as well, but didn't get a picture of myself and Korby didn't dress up at all (party pooper!) So we almost had a whole family of vampires. My mom made the awesome capes for my kids. You can't see the insides of all their capes, but it matched the bow on the top. They were awesome! Thanks mom!

Day 8- St Thomas

Our last full day of the cruise was in port at St. Thomas. We rented scooters for the day to explore the island. They drive on the left hand side of the road~ it felt very strange and the fact that we were on tiny scooters, not knowing our way around made it a little more nerve racking. The girls spent the morning shopping while the guys took off on the scooters and explored. By this time the other 3 were snorkeled out and sun burned pretty bad (I was neither!) so we didn't intentionally get in the water this day.

I am so glad that Korby was driving~ although I was a pretty annoying back seat driver (especially since I was directly behind him, holding/gripping onto him and talking in his ear the whole time!) You can't see it in the picture, but my helmet had a HUGE dent in the side of it~ luckily not from me!

This was the only plain building I saw the entire time~ and it stood out so much!


We were stopped at this look out and we could see off to the right a storm coming in (it is hard to see in the picture). It rained every day of our cruise, but only a slight shower for a couple of minutes and then it would pass. This one was not like the others. When I said earlier that we didn't intentionally get in the water this day, I meant that we didn't get in the ocean to swim. Not 3 minutes after we got back on our scooters from this look out point it started POURING! We were drenched within a couple of minutes~ on a twisting road, up on the hillside, on scooters, in shorts and flip flops~ not really ideal conditions to get caught in a storm. So, we had to pull off to the side of the road and wait it out. It lasted for about 10 minutes, but it was long enough to completely soak us. It was an adventure and made for some fun memories!

We had read about a local art gallery that we wanted to visit. When we got there we saw that is was just a group of small local artist shops. Not what we were expecting, but very unique and fun. They even paint their bikes there!

I wish we would have found this sign earlier in the week. Our guys could have used a little sympathy while we were shopping.

This door was was incredible! The entire thing is sea shells~ it must have taken forever to make!

One of our last stops was a beach called Meagen's Bay. We read that it was one of the Top 10 small beaches in the world. It was breath taking!

There were some little boats just sitting on the shore by an old life guard tower. The water was so clear that we were in the water up to our knees and we could see every single grain of sand on the bottom!

As we were leaving the port, this was a resort that we passed by. Doesn't that look like the perfect place to just hang out for a week?!

After eight days of vacationing and 2 days of traveling, it was perfect! We loved every minute of it~ but were very excited to come home to our wonderful children!

Day 7- St Marteen

St. Marteen was amazing! Our plans changed a little bit once we got off the boat. We had planned on doing a zip line tour, which included lunch and a hike. But when we got there, we learned that it was under construction and closed. So, we decided to rent a car and drive ourselves around the island.

If you look close, you can see someone washing the windows on the front of the boat!

Again, the beaches were just stunning!

While everyone else was snorkeling, this pelican hung out by me for about 20 minutes! I got to watch it fly, dive down in the water and come back up with a beak full of water and fish. It was a very large bird.

We were trying to find a beach with good snorkeling. At one stop, some guys showed us an island and for $20 per couple they would take us out there and pick us up 3 hours later. The ride out there and back were a little sketchy! The guys drove us out there on Sea-Doo's (Korby and I on one and our friends on the other Sea-Doo with the other driver). The two guys were as high as a kite! They were racing each other all the way there and on the way back as well~ and racing on 3 seated Sea-Doo's with impaired judgement made for a crazy ride for us! They were jumping each other's wakes and trying to swerve into one another, all at full speed. We were getting a couple feet of air on some of the jumps and there were a couple of times that Korby (sitting on the very back) almost fell off from bouncing so far off the seat. But we ended up with our own private beach! And I was told that the snorkeling was amazing~ Korby even got to swim with a sea turtle.

This is a picture from a cave on "our island" looking back at St Marteen. It was a fun island to explore. I found so much coral and a whole pile of conch shells. I brought one back for Shayden that was about a foot long! It is beautiful!

I started taking a photography class right before we left on vacation, and one of the accessories that our instructor talked about was a polarized filter. It is supposed to take away some of the light reflections. In this picture it is amazing to see what taking away the reflection of the sun off the water and clouds does to the color of the picture!
We ate lunch on the beach and this was the view from our table! I could really get used to this! There was a strip of shops along the beach and now I know what I want to do once Korby retires~ open up a little gift shop on the beach in the Caribbean!

At every port the ship just dominated the entire scene!

We ended the day with a little bit of shopping. A lot of it was either tourist junk or very high end merchandise. But we did find a linen shop that I could have spent hours in and way too much money~ so it's a good thing that we had a time limit to get back to the ship!

It was about this point where we realized that the week was going by way too fast. I also realized that although there were moments where we thought about our kids, we really weren't missing them at all! (Is that bad parenting, or just the effects of a really great vacation?!)

Day 6- Sea Day

Our second day at sea was just as relaxing as the first. We slept in, ate, read, hung out by the pool, ate, worked out, played miniature golf, saw an ice-skating show, ate, played cards, went to see a comedian, sat in the hot tub. I carried my camera around all day and still didn't take any pictures until we got back to our room after dinner. Every day when your room gets cleaned they make an animal for you out of towels. The monkey is always the favorite~ it is hanging right over your bed and they always find a pair of your sunglasses to put on it!

Day 5- Curacao

After our crazy busy day in Aruba, we had a very nice un-scheduled day in Curacao. We spent the first half of the day just walking around the city, going to an open market, and a museum.

Curacao was so incredibly colorful! We learned that one of their first leaders/founder (again a little vague on the details) passed a law stating that there could be no white buildings~ hence every single building being painted a different color. Later it came out that he owned a major portion of stock in the island's only paint company! I almost wish someone would do that here~ outlaw beige houses! This building was completed in 1708! It is so beautiful and in amazing condition considering how old it is!

This picture shows the row of shops that greeted us as we got off the boat, with the freeway overpass in the background.

The architecture combined with the colors made the entire city so beautiful! This is one of Korby's favorite pictures.

This is the back side of a floating market. All of those boats pulled up the the edge of the sidewalk and sold all kinds of fresh fish, produce, veggies and spices righ off their boat. It was nice to see what their normal market would look like instead of seeing all the tourist trash that most places sell.

On the side of one building they had painted a mural, but made it 3-dimensional. There were little squirrels, butterflies and grasshoppers all over the flowers and columns. Very unique.

This is awesome!!!

After walking around the city, we got some lunch and headed out to the beach. You had to pay to get onto the beaches and then pay to use the chairs they had, but it was so beautiful! The other 3 went snorkeling while I relaxed on beach. I finished 4 books in 10 days! It was wonderful!

The beaches were gorgeous! If you look to the far left you can see our ship in the background.

There really aren't any words to describe how amazing the beaches were! White sandy beaches, crystal clear blue water, palm trees and a good book~ perfect!

Day 4- Aruba

Our first stop was Aruba! We had reserved a jeep tour of the island that included historical stops, lunch, an ostrich farm, and snorkeling~ all that would take us around the entire island (it isn't that big). When we made the reservations it said that we would be driving our own jeep and that there would be some four wheeling. Little did we know, it would be all four wheeling (except for being right in town- which wasn't much). It had poured all day long the day before we got there and it sprinkled a little bit while we were there. So, the dirt roads were full of puddles and pits. If any of you have been on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland~ that is the best way I can describe it. Except instead of lasting for 4 minutes, it was all day long! I am so thankful that I was still on Dramamine (for motion sickness on the boat) so I didn't get sick. It was pretty intense, but so much fun!!!

The landscape was so diverse. Along the coast were beautiful beaches and palm trees, but then right next to it there were cactus EVERYWHERE! It was a strange sight.

At each stop they gave us some history of the island. Korby would stand with the group and listen intently while I wondered off and took pictures! All I remember about this lighthouse is that is was the first one on the island and it is really old.

The most famous tourist spot on Aruba was a natural bridge. However a year or so ago it collapsed. This is another, much smaller one, right next to it. It was pretty disappointing to just see a pile of rocks. But this was still beautiful.

This is the opposite side of the island from the port and it is not populated at all. It was beautiful to see that much coast undeveloped. You can see the road here, but it doesn't really do it justice as to just how uneven, un-groomed and overly bumpy it was!

This picture shows the wishing stones. Again~ I didn't hear too much of what the guide was saying, but what I did get was that people would write down a wish and then make a pile of 5-7 rocks on top of the wish to make it come true. The beach was literally covered with them.

Here are Korby and I in front of an old gold refinery. It was incredible! I didn't hear how old it was, but it was really old! It was amazing to see how basic their building skills/materials were ~ but look at how precise their windows were! It was impressive.

Another stop was a cave. It was very different than being in the US. People were touching everything, gum was stuck on rocks, people had carved their names in the rocks~ it wasn't regulated at all. It was beautiful and a little creepy at the same time. They only took you in a little ways, but they flashed their lights to show where it kept going~ and it kept going for a long time. I was thankful we didn't have to go too far in.

And for some reason (we never really heard a straight answer) they had soldiers guarding the entrance to the cave?! We were told it was part of their training. What were they being trained to do~ sit around and do nothing next to something that doesn't need to be guarded?

This might be one of my favorite shots! This was one of the most beautiful beaches, but only if you looked at it from the right angle! Because the rest of the view is disturbed by the giant refinery about 100 yards away! What an interesting combination!

This was one of the beaches that we stopped at to snorkel. I promised Korby that I would try snorkeling again (I tried it for a second in Mexico, but didn't like it at all). I thought that it would be different in clear blue water with better fish. Korby was pretty excited for me to snorkel with him this time. I was all ready to go!

It didn't take me long to realize that I HATE snorkeling~ regardless of the location! I was in the water for about 30 seconds, saw about 5 fish and then booked it back to the beach! But I did try!
So, while everyone else went snorkeling, what else would I do besides take pictures?! I found this crab. I have never seen one in the "wild" this big before. You can't really tell from the picture, but when he was standing up on his legs, he was about the size of a cantaloupe! It was crazy! Since he was so big, it made it easy to see where the expression "crabby face" came from. He had the meanest scowl!


This is just a picture taken in town. There was a lot of poverty and everything was pretty old and run down. But everything was so colorful that it created a different kind of beauty than we usually associate with beautiful homes in the US.

This picture does not do it justice~ but this was the craziest part of the day. This hillside was sooo.... steep and sooo.... slippery and soooo.... uneven and soooo.... full of boulders it was sooo... scary! We watched the jeep in front of us slide down about 30 yards with the brakes on~ they couldn't stop! The driver behind us actually refused to drive down, so one of the guides had to drive his jeep down and then run up the hill to drive the other jeep down. I don't know what was worse~ driving down or driving back up?! On the way back up, the jeep in front of us went the wrong way on one section, got stuck and had to reverse back down. Everyone in the back was screaming, they came really close to rolling over (which they would have just kept rolling all the way down the hill into the ocean!), there were little girls in the jeep behind us crying because they were too scared to keep going, a couple of people got out of the jeeps and hiked up the hill because they didn't want to ride in the jeep! It really was INSANE!!!

I guess all the terror was worth it to see this beach! You couldn't really snorkel here~ it was very rocky but very beautiful!

Not pictured is the ostrich farm that we went to. We stopped there for lunch and then got a tour of the grounds. It was raining, so the camera stayed in my backpack. They let you feed them and pet them. The best part was seeing 5 baby ostriches! They were so "little"~ only about 18" tall, with soft, pretty feathers~looking nothing like the ugly grown ups.

The jeep tour was supposed to end at 5 and the ship was leaving at 6. We got back to the ship at 5:40 (and only because they made a detour to bring us back to the ship because I had a spa appointment to get to). We were getting kind of frustrated with our guide, because he wasn't really trying to hurry up. He just kept telling us that we were on "Caribbean time" and to go with the flow. But if we hadn't kept bugging him, we would have missed our ship! So thank goodness for my spa appointment!

So, my spa appointment... the day before, on the ship, I won a free scalp, neck and shoulder massage and 1/2 off of a seaweed wrap. The seaweed wrap was interesting~ it felt good, but I don't know if I would do it again. The scalp, neck and shoulder massage on the other hand was HEAVENLY!!!! My head was drenched in oil the rest of the night, but it was worth it!

After that, we ate dinner, sat in the hot tub and went to bed very tired, but very excited for the next day!