Cruise

We had the most amazing opportunity to go on a cruise with Jareds family! It was my first cruise and Jared's second...so I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was tons of fun!

Thursday Nov.21:
We left Rexburg at about 7:30 PM and dropped Raymie off at my parents house to stay there until we came home. It was so sad and hard to leave her. We then drove to Jared's parents house, dropped our car off and Greg drove all of us to Utah. We spent the night in a hotel close to the airport.

Friday Nov. 22:
We woke up early that morning and headed to the airport. Now let me just tell you that I absolutely HATE flying. It makes me nervous being that high in the air and if we go down...ugh. I hate it. But I ended up doing ok. We took our first flight to Dallas, Texas and had a three hour lay over there. Than we flew to Florida and spent the night in a hotel there. We pretty much got locked out of our room that night too. Haha. The dang card key wouldn't work and the door was pretty much jammed shut. We even had the security guard bring an actual key to unlock it, and that didn't work. Adam (my brother-in-law) really wanted to kick the door down. haha. It was really funny until Adam lied and said that he had medicine in there that he needed. haha. So than the workers finally took us a little more seriously. The hotel people were acting as if it wasn't even that bad of a problem. ALL of the rooms were being used...except for one that was a smoking room, which we did not want to stay in. And ALL OF OUR STUFF was locked in that room and I mean EVERYTHING! So I think Adam got so impatient to the point where when the security guard wasn't looking, he slid his card key between the door frame and the door...and broke in. hahaha. It was funny because when the security guard noticed, he said (in his Russian accent) "You need to teach me how to do that". haha so funny.

Saturday Nov.23:
We left the hotel at around noon and took the bus to our cruise ship. We were able to board at around 2pm. We boarded the ship, checked out our rooms, than went to eat. It's all just a giant buffet all the time. Non stop eating.

Monkey

Pig? Dog? not sure.

The rest of the cruise is kinda mushed together...so I'll go from there.

The dinners on the cruise were always amazing! I never had duck until the cruise and it was quite good. Some of my favorite foods were the appetizers. The desserts, however, were not my favorite. They always dressed them up as though they would be heavenly...but they never tasted that way. By the end of the cruise I just wanted a McDonalds hot fudge sunday. haha. Whenever we were hungry and it wasn't time until dinner yet, we would always go get a crescent roll sandwich or a delicious slice of pizza. Ice cream cones were always available on one of the top decks...but there always seemed to be a line. It was always worth it though. We all gained a few pounds for sure.

Dinner Formal Night

The excursions were awesome. On St. Marteen we power rafted around the islands and than went snorkeling. On St. Kitts we went paddle boarding and some more snorkeling. It was all a lot of fun! While snorkeling we saw a lobster. Some of the others in our group saw an octopus and a sea turtle!

Brittany and Adam

Janell, Caleb, Cully, Greg

Power Rafting. 

After paddle boarding...I was so sore. 

The rest of the islands that we visited we pretty  much just walked around and admired everything. For Thanksgiving we ended up in Puerto Rico we got caught in the rain. It was pouring on us and we were in an area where there was literally no where to find cover...so we just went with it. haha we were all completely drenched and all the men ended up stripping their shirts off.

Jared Puerto Rico 

Puerto Rico 

Storms a cummin'

Brittany and Caleb Puerto Rico 

After the rain 

Puerto Rico

After the rain...completely wet

Puerto Rico

Our last stop was Haiti. There we all played on the beach, bathed in the warm sun, played some water volleyball...with a beach ball...and bought a lot of suveniours. Jared gave in to a lot of people. haha. We ended up buying wood cups, woulds staff...kinda like Moses' I would imagine, a few paintings, a wood bowl. yeah anyways there was a lot.

Jared and his Staff

I got to hold a monkey...that was both adorable and creepy at the same time. Monkeys are weird.

After Brittany had just put the monkey on my head and it didn't like it

Monkeys!

For one of the dinner nights we all dressed up in our clothes we had bought at the DI prior to the cruise. We all looked fantastic if I do say so myself.

We rented out the wave rider on the ship and surfed and boogie boarded for two nights. That was a lot of fun and we found out that I do weird things with my hands when I am concentrating....

We participated in many activities on the ship. We played volleyball, soccer, and dodgeball and competed against others on the ship. Our family one a few and even got super awesome medals for it. haha. I suck at all of those sports so I decided to do the rock climbing competition....I won, because I'm awesome. Hahaha....nope. I was the only girl...so technically I didn't really win, but I won out of all the other girls. Haha at least I didn't get last out of the boys and girls.

We spent a lot of time in the hot tub.

We went dancing two nights of the week and I wish I would have gone more. When I say "we", I really  mean me, Brittany, Adam, Shayne, and Jenny. Jared doesn't like to participate in that kind of thing....makes me sad. But it was pretty funny.

Jared did some gambling. Haha it was fun to watch him. He is so stingy with money that he would out $5 down and than win....leave for a couple of hours and than do it again. He ended up on top.

We had a lot of fun! I really missed Raymie, but it was really enjoyable and so worth it.