When your pajamas have never been more right ;)
I'm a little slow getting back to this, but here are the last three days of our paradise vacation!
Friday morning we docked on in Cozumel Mexico.
We had decided in Cozumel we were going to just have a relaxing day. We booked an all inclusive resort to just sit and eat and drink pina coladas all day long.
While we relaxed these two did anything but. I don't think they sat still for two minutes. They swam, snorkeled, and played in the sand, and collected an entire beach lounge chair worth of shells and coral.
We didn't get a picture of the final product, but this chair was completely full by the end of the day! Luckily we were able to talk them into only picking their 5 favorites and throwing the rest back.
Macie was cracking me up. By this time she had gotten really used to being pampered. This swim up bar was her little heaven. She'd swim up, order herself an orange soda and sit at the tables in the pool drinking it.
We reserved a cabana for the day also, and it was heavenly.
Jake and my dad took the girls out kayaking on the ocean, and my mom and I got heavenly massages on the beach. Kind of like a dream. I could have stayed there all day long.
It was a dreamy day. We were not ready for the day to end.
That night was our last formal night at dinner.
One of the girls favorite parts was these cute animals our state room attendant, Stephen, would make for us. We loved him!
I can't remember if I talked about this before but after dinner every night the girls would be begging to go to the Adventure Ocean, kids area. So Jake and I and my mom and dad would go do stuff, and we'd always at some point end up at a show. This particular night was an 80's tribute band. That was absolutely incredible. It was so much fun. Some other things we did was listen to other bands, 70's music trivia (that we almost won!), action comedy shows, a cirque du soleil show, comedians, the Broadway play Saturday Night Fever. Sometimes we just did the dancing on the Promenade, some times we shopped. There was basically endless things to do!
The next day was a sea day and we decided to do all the things on the ship we hadn't gotten to yet, and do again our favorites. We truly spent most of the day at the pool eating Ice Cream non stop....because wouldn't you??!! But we also took breaks to go Ice Skating, ride the water slides, mini golfing, and lots of pizza and BBQ breaks.
The next day was our final day. Time to get off the ship and head home. We we so so sad that it was over, but also extremely ready to get and back to Harley and Lainee! It was killing me! So imagine how stressed we were when we got an email at about 9:30 that morning saying they had cancelled our flights home!!! It was so stressful....we had probably at least 50 people on our ship also from Utah (lots of family reunions!!) and all of our flights were cancelled. (It was actually all flights from Houston to the western United States) but all of us from Utah trying to get our flights rescheduled...it was so stressful. Some people were able to get out the next day on Monday, but by the time we were on hold for 40 minutes and got through the next flights were on Tuesday! (It was Sunday...) We were not happy. After some finagling we were able to get on a flight out that night but it was out of Dallas....4 hours away....and the flight left in 5 hours. And we were still on our ship. We had to mad dash off our ship, through customs, get a taxi get to a rental car and drive the 4 hours to Dallas. About half way into our drive we were quickly realizing (which we already suspected....) we were NOT going to make it. But about that time we got another email saying that that flight had been delayed an hour. We were so relieved! We made to the rental car place and returned the car, took the shuttle to the terminal, got our bags checked, and through security. It was 4:40 (our original flight was supposed to leave at 4:30!) So grateful our flight had been delayed. Thinking we had plenty of time to get to our gate we started walking and stopped at a screen to see what gate to go to, and found out that they had changed our flight yet again and it was leaving in 10 minutes!! We ran to the gate, and they hadn't started boarding yet, thank goodness. We were a few hours later getting home, but we were just so grateful to actually be home!
And ever since we've been back we've basically been planning the next one! We had so much fun. Emery and Macie periodically bring up things they miss from the cruise and we all take little trip down memory lane. I definitely convinced Jake that cruises are the best vacations ever. And he dubbed the best vacation of his life. I've been on a lot of trips and I would have to agree. Having the time and attention to just devote to the girls for a week was so much fun. (and actually relaxing!) My whole family is looking at cruises to go on together next time and we can hardly wait!!
