Oh em gee!

Last time I wrote was September 20! I really, really need to not to slack off on this blog- everytime I write, I'm always explaining why I didn't write!

Christmas was pretty low-key for us because we booked a cruise for just Randy and I last January! Yes, we went on a cruise and Benjamin stayed home! We were gone for 7 days and we went to Florida, Nassau, and Freeport (2 Bahamian islands). Natalie watched Ben and we are so grateful for her friendship. We trade babysitting and it works out so well. The cruise was amazing! It was cold for the first couple days since we had gone in January. Once we were away from Florida and towards the Bahamas, it got to be a bit warmer to the point where everyone was outside in the pools. One awesome thing we loved was going into the hot tub pretty much every night. We love the hot tubs. They also had a gym so I was able to continue my regime a few days that week. We went on Carnival. We probably won't do Carnival again because the food wasn't as good as we have been told and there weren't many couples activities on the ship. We were told by several seasoned cruisers that Carnival is definitely on the low-end of the cruise lines. I didn't want to hear that because hello, I'm on my first cruise with my husband without our baby- I want to have fun, not hear your complaints! Nevertheless, we plan on going on another cruise in 2014 with Princess or Norwegian. When we got back from the cruise, it took me a long time, mentally, to adjust to being back home. Probably a week and a half. The first night we were back, we didn't have much food in the fridge and it was Sunday (We try not to shop on Sundays) so we were snacking on whatever we had left and Randy was still a bit hungry. At 10pm, we were sitting on the couch talking and he said, "Man, I'm hungry. Let's order some room service." I looked at him like "Honey, we're not on the ship anymore." We both looked at each other and just laughed. I can't remember but I think Randy ran to the store to grab something for us both or we ate out of our food storage.

 I loved the towel animals. We attended a class on the ship on how to make these!

 We became very good friends with this couple. It's hard not to when you see them every night for dinner! This was at formal night.

 Florida beach. I was bummed out because I forgot my camera for most of the day. We went paddle boarding! I loved loved it and I was the only one, besides, our coach, who didn't fall! Poor Randy.

 Randy's Uncle Lynn lives in Florida with his family so we got to see them. We went out to lunch with him, his wife, and his 2 youngest kids. We were also fortunate enough to get a tour of his base! It was pretty neat. This was at the end of our day when he dropped us off at our ship.

 In Nassau- we took a tour of the city with some seafaring friends from our ship and it was pretty cool.

 We went on a wave runner! A wave runner is like a jet ski but for 2 people. It was a lot of fun and had it for a hour- you can do a lot in an hour!

 This is in Freeport, our last port. It was kind of disappointing because we had signed up to go swimming with the dolphins in the ocean and scuba diving but it was so windy, the ship canceled all water activities. We tried to check with anyone on shore who ran these activities themselves but they wouldn't do it due to the wind. In the picture above, you can see a small idea of how windy it was. We went shopping at some beach malls and it was actually pretty fun- not as easy to haggle like it is in Mexico but you can still haggle on prices. We just walked on the beach and took it easy. It was really quite nice.

 Formal night.

 Sunset on our last night.